Ardyth Kennelly

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Ardyth Kennelly (April 15, 1912 - January 19, 2005) was a female American novelist whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was born in Glenada, Oregon[citation needed] on April 15, 1912, and grew up in Glenada, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Albany, Oregon, graduating from Albany High School and from Oregon State College in 1933.

In 1940 she married Dr. Egon V. Ullman of Portland, Oregon; she was widowed in 1962. She lived for 40 years in downtown Portland where she held occasional salons and hosted diverse gatherings of selected guests. She continued to write without submission for publication; one of her last projects being a play entitled “Last Rites for Barbie.”

Late in life she developed a second career as an artist, specializing in collages and mixed media constructions, with two major exhibits, the first at the Elizabeth Leach Gallery at the age of 84 (approximately 1996). There’s an online record of her second exhibit, a showing of "collages and mixed-media installations" in the Mark Woolley gallery in Portland in August and September of 2000[1]

Toward the end of her life Kennelly moved to Vancouver to be near her sister, and died there in January 19, 2005 at the age of 92 (see full obituary text below.)

Kennelly's greatest popular success is her first novel, The Peaceable Kingdom. Published in 1949, it introduces the household and social circle of a polygamous wife of Swedish extraction living in Salt Lake City at the turn of the century, just before polygamy is repudiated by the Mormon Church.

Contents

[edit] Career

Kennelly's writing career can be divided into three distinct periods:

  1. Improvement Era: 1930 - 1936
  2. Pulp Romance: 1936 - 1940
  3. Novelist: 1949 - 1956

A full listing of Kennelly's Improvement Era contributions with original text, plus reader commentary and notice of her work's inclusion in Mormon reading courses and study groups can be found in the LDS Library and Mormon Literature Database (see REFERENCES below [2]). Online data on the second period of her career is unavailable beyond the names and publication dates of her stories in two pulp periodicals, All-Story Love Stories and Smith & Street's Love Story Magazine (which became Love Story Magazine in 1952). Five novels are listed in amazon.com, although two are rather rare / expensive and one is currently unavailable. However, copies of The Peaceable Kingdom are easily located and purchased on a variety of online platforms, witnessing the success it enjoyed with contemporary readers (500,000 copies sold).

[edit] Improvement Era (1930 - 1936)

Kennelly began her career at the age of 18 with the publication of three poems in Improvement Era in 1930 (see REFERENCES, PUBLICATION TIMELINE below). Between September of that year and January 1936, she published a total of 28 poems and five short stories in this LDS periodical. Although the majority of this work is unabashedly sentimental and focused squarely on love and romance, sub themes appear as well, hinting at the insight into mature love, motherhood, death, and the restorative working of faith and nature (including human nature) that are expressed so powerfully in her masterpiece, The Peaceable Kingdom.

For the most part, Kennelly's Improvement Era work is naive and conventional in structure and plot. The poems are almost uniformly about romantic love, and it is clear that Kennelly's experience and insight were limited indeed at this time of her life. It is also clear that she is reaching in her imagination for the breadth and depth of experience she would demonstrate so ably more than a decade later in Kingdom. (Two of the more noteworthy poems appear at the end of this essay; neither is clearly connected to romance.)

In typical Kennelly fashion the stories all end happily; they are more varied in theme however. Only one is focused exclusively on young love; it involves a young man returning from his two year Church missionary work (How Lovely Youth). Another story, apparently quite popular with readers, is about motherhood - step motherhood to be exact - the silent collision and eventual convergence of vastly divergent internal realities of a little girl and her step mom (Some Beautiful Way). Another story involves death and a crisis of faith; given her sub themes in Kingdom it's notable that nature, rather than doctrine, brings about "proof" and resolution (And Afterward Came Spring).

A fourth story (Fire and Song) is, in the words of its author, "a story of Faith. . Faith is Fire, clean and strong and glowing, kindled on hills, sending light through all the darkness and warmth through all cold." She adds this apologia: "I'm nineteen. I tell you because I want you to understand if this tremendous theme is handled clumsily and a little too breathlessly." Indeed, it is handled awkwardly and more than a little too breathlessly, but that is to be expected in a young woman of her era. [To keep things in perspective, read the youthful work of Keats (for example) and note the mawkish sentimentality and ill-expressed eroticism of his early efforts. This will serve as an antidote should you be inclined to discount the mature Kennelly based on the undeniable naiveté of her early work.]

What makes the story of young Mormon converts rejected by family and friends noteworthy is, in fact, its striking contrast with Kennelly's assurance and masterly handling of similar themes (faith, death, and friendship) in Kingdom. Her beginning in Fire may have seemed unpromising, but in this case appearances were deceptive indeed.

If Fire reveals a halting start to Kennelly's quest to illuminate the best and noblest of human virtues, her remaining story (That Day Was Grand, 1935) is an early example of the technique that would so magnificently display them in Kingdom. Like Some Beautiful Way, Grand is told from the point of view of a very young schoolgirl who idolizes a woman whom she considers the epitome of female beauty and perfection - and possessed of that ineffable quality we now term "cool." (In this vein, another Mormon novelist, Orson Scott Card, notes: "Children choose their heroes with unerring stupidity.")

In Grand Kennelly does something that sets it apart from her other Era work. By faithfully reporting the words, thoughts, and feelings of the rapt young acolyte, she slyly reveals beautiful Rose's egotism, low-caste lifestyle and taste, slovenliness, shallow values and poor judgment, and her likely fate should she continue to walk the path she has chosen. Rose is not evil by any means (Kennelly does not appear to believe in human evil, or at least she never dwells on it), but she is dangerous to herself and dangerous to young Laurel through the influence she could so easily exert if not for the watchfulness and wisdom of Laurel's mother and grandmother.

Rose's character is revealed through Laurel's words and the words of others as Laurel reports them. Here Kennelly first finds her natural voice, abandoning the high-minded verbalizations of her noble male / cherished female duo in Fire. Instead, we hear women's everyday colloquialisms and intimate cadences, knowing them directly through their words and actions, just as in real life. Grand shows us in fledgling form Kennelly's ability to make a character vivid, authentic, and endearing in imperfection by reporting a few well-chosen words and thoughts.

[edit] Pulp romance (1936 - 1940)

If the online record can be trusted, Kennelly's pulp career began the year her Improvement Era contributions ended - in 1936. This year saw the publication of her last poem in the Mormon periodical (On A Restless Night see below), and what appears to have been her first mainstream story for All-Story Love Stories (There's No Telling). According to FictionMags Index ([3]) she published a total of five romance short stories in two popular pulp magazines from 1936 to 1940 (All-Story Love Stories, Street & Smith's Love Story Magazine).

It's unfortunate that the stories themselves are lost unless surviving issues containing them can be located. It's a worthwhile effort, but the poor paper quality that pulp periodicals are known for, combined with their great age (sixty-plus years have passed since the stories first appeared) yields a poor prognosis for success.

However, it is possible to gain some idea of the nature of the periodicals themselves by viewing a few surviving examples of cover art for each magazine ([4] [5]).

It is not unreasonable to suppose that Kennelly may have published elsewhere as well, particularly given the dramatic maturing of her style between her last Improvement Era contribution and her first novel, but if so no record is currently available via the internet.

[edit] Novelist (1949 - 1956)

Kennelly's first novel, The Peaceable Kingdom, was published in 1949 and was followed by four more with the last published in 1956.

  1. The Peaceable Kingdom, 1949. Kennelly's first and apparently most popular novel (500,000 copies sold).
  2. The Spur, 1951. A fictionalized treatment of John Wilkes Booth.
  3. Good Morning Young Lady, 1953. Coming of age novel, fictional but including anecdotes based on the life of Butch Cassidy.

[edit] Works

[edit] Publication timeline

  • 1996 – ART – Elizabeth Leach Gallery (approximate date based on The Oregonian obituary, 1/30/05).
  • 2000 - ART - The Gold Door (?) - Collages / mixed media installations, Mark Woolley Gallery, Portland OR, USA.
  • 1956 - BOOK - Marry Me, Carry Me - Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, ASIN: B000CSSDRC. [6]
  • 1955 - BOOK - Up Home - publisher unknown, ASIN: B0007E4BW2 (sequel to The Peaceable Kingdom). [7]
  • 1953 - BOOK - Good Morning, Young Lady - Houghton, Mifflin Co., ASIN: B0007DYTO8. (Link with dust jacket pic: [8])
  • 1951 - BOOK - The Spur - Julian Messner, Inc., New York, ASIN: B000CSCOSG. [9]
  • 1949 - BOOK - The Peaceable Kingdom - Houghton, Mifflin Co., ASIN: B000F2WTDE. (Link with reader reviews: [10])
  • 1940 - STORY - Last Christmas - Street & Smith’s Love Story Magazine, Dec 21 1940. [11]
  • 1937 - STORY - My Love is Here for Tea - All-Story Love Stories, Jan 30 1937. [12]
  • 1936 - STORY - Now That, At Night - All-Story Love Stories, Mar 28 1936. [13]
  • 1936 - STORY - Song About Love - All-Story Love Stories, Mar 7 1936. [14]
  • 1936 - STORY - There's No Telling - All-Story Love Stories, May 30 1936. [15]
  • 1936 - POEM - On A Restless Night - Improvement Era, v. 39 no. 1, Jan 1936. [16]
  • 1935 - POEM - On A Long Day - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 12, Dec 1935. [17]
  • 1935 - POEM - There Wasn't Much - Improvement Era, v.38 no. 10, Oct 1935. [18]
  • 1935 - POEM - Last Straw - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 7, Jul 1935. [19]
  • 1935 - STORY - That Day Was Grand - Improvement Era, v. 38 no. 5, May 1935. [20]
  • 1934 - POEM - Beyond Belief - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 9, Sep 1934. [21]
  • 1934 - POEM - For the Dark Stranger - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 7, Jul 1934. [22]
  • 1934 - POEM - Date Tonight - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 7, Jul 1934. [23]
  • 1934 - POEM - These Things - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 6, Jun 1934. [24]
  • 1934 - POEM - Inside Story - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 4, Apr 1934. [25]
  • 1934 - STORY - Some Beautiful Way - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 2, Feb 1934. [26]
  • 1934 - POEM - On the Back of an Envelope - Improvement Era, v. 37 no. 2, Feb 1934. [27]
  • 1933 - STORY - How Lovely Youth - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 10, Aug 1933. [28]
  • 1933 - POEMS - Sixteen Sings (set of 10 poems) - Improvement Era, v.36 no. 6, Apr 1933. [29]
  • 1933 - POEM - I Want Peace - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 5, Mar 1933. [30]
  • 1932 - STORY - Fire and Song - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 12, Oct 1932. [31]
  • 1932 - POEM - Reincarnated - Improvement Era, v. 36 no. 10, Aug 1932. [32]
  • 1932 - POEM - Conversation On A Still Afternoon - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 6, Apr 1932. [33]
  • 1932 - STORY - And Afterward Came Spring - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 6, Apr 1932. [34]
  • 1932 - POEM - The Color of Yesterday - Improvement Era, v. 35 no. 5, Mar 1932. [35]
  • 1931 - POEM - Song to Your Coming - Improvement Era, v. 34 no. 7, May 1931. [36]
  • 1930 - POEM - The Party - Improvement Era, v. 34 no. 2, Dec 1930. [37]
  • 1930 - POEM - Wish - Improvement Era, v. 33 no. 12, Oct 1930. [38]
  • 1930 - POEM - Shower - Improvement Era, v. 33 no. 11, Sep 1930. [39]

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Portland Mercury, Aug 31 - Sep 6 2000 - [1].
 This article or section includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations.
You can improve this article by introducing more precise citations.
  • All-Story Love Stories. Periodical; a continuation of Munsey’s Magazine. 584 issues (2 unconfirmed). [40]
  • Amazon.com - The Peaceable Kingdom 1949 edition record with reader reviews. [41]
  • Card, Orson Scott. 1985. The Fringe, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October. Finalist, Hugo and Nebula awards. Reprinted in The Folk of the Fringe, Tor, 1989.
  • Improvement Era. LDS periodical; 1987 - 1970 (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [42]
  • LDS Library - list of Ardyth Kennelly references (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [43]
  • Mormon Literature Database - novels by Ardyth Kennelly (id / pw, 14 day trial available). [44]
  • OSU Alumni Association (osualum@oregonstate.edu). Via 8/23/06 email, Courtney Ball, Alumni Programs Specialist, Corvallis, OR 97331-6303 confirmed Kennelly’s 1933 graduation from Oregon State University.
  • The Oregonian, 1/30/2005 (as appearing in the Albany Democrat-Herald, 1/31/05). Obituary summarizes Ardyth Kennelly Ullman’s life events with partial citation to Portland literary historian Brian Booth.
  • Smithsonian, June 2006. “An Assassin’s Final Hours,” James L. Swanson pp. 66 – 74. Excerpt from “Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer,” William Morrow, February 2006.
  • Street & Smith’s Love Story Magazine. From 3/1931 – 2/1947 under this name; Love Story Magazine after 1952. [45]