Rachel Holmes Ingalls (13 May 1940 – 6 March 2019) was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards.
in ''Contemporary Authors'', New Revision Series, 2007 She won the 1970

Authors' Club First Novel Award The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is awarded by the Authors' Club to the most promising first novel of the year, written by a British author and published in the UK during the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is presented. ...

for ''Theft''. Her novella ''

Mrs. Caliban ''Mrs. Caliban'' (1982) is a novella by Rachel Ingalls. The plot concerns a lonely housewife who finds companionship with an amphibious sea monster named Larry. The book was reissued in 2017. Reception The novella saw little critical or comm ...

'' was published in 1982, and her book of short stories ''Times Like These'' in 2005. Ingalls's short story "Last Act: The Madhouse" inspired the story of the character Jean in the 1997 film '' Chinese Box'' by Wayne Wang.

Personal life

Ingalls was born on 13 May 1940, in Boston and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where her father was a professor at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

."The Hallucinatory Realism of Rachel Ingalls,"
'' The New Yorker'', 25 February 2019. She received her B. A. degree from

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

in 1964, and immigrated to England. She was the daughter of Phyllis (née Day) and the late Sanskritist

Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Sr. Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Sr. (May 4, 1916 – July 17, 1999) was the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University. Early life Ingalls was born in New York City and raised in Virginia. He received his A.B. in 1936, at Harvard majori ...

, and the sister of the computer scientist

Dan Ingalls Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Jr. (born 1944) is a pioneer of object-oriented computer programming and the principal architect, designer and implementer of five generations of Smalltalk environments. He designed the bytecoded virtual machine that ...

. Ingalls died from

multiple myeloma Multiple myeloma (MM), also known as plasma cell myeloma and simply myeloma, is a cancer of plasma cells, a type of white blood cell that normally produces antibodies. Often, no symptoms are noticed initially. As it progresses, bone pain, an ...

under hospice care in London on 6 March 2019, at age 78.

Literary reputation

Ingalls' reputation is characterised by deep admiration and acclaim but also a certain degree of obscurity. She has referred to her limited commercial success as being due to the ''very odd, unsalable length" of her books, which tend to be story collections or novellas. She was awarded the Authors' Club First Novel Award for her book ''Theft''. In 1986 the British Book Marketing Council named the hitherto little known ''Mrs Caliban'' as one of the 20 greatest American novels since World War II, sparking wider interest in both book and writer. Earlier praise for ''Mrs Caliban'' came from

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...

. The writer Daniel Handler is an advocate of Ingalls' work.

Bibliography

* ''Theft'' (1970). London: Faber. * ''The Man Who Was Left Behind and Other Stories'' (1974). London: Faber. * ''

'' (1982). London: Faber. * ''Binstead's Safari'' (1983). London: Dent. * ''Three of a Kind'' (1985). London: Faber. * ''The Pearlkillers'' (1986). London: Faber. * ''The End of Tragedy'' (1987). London: Faber. * ''Four Stories'' (1987). London: Faber. * ''Days Like Today'' (2000). London: Faber. * ''Times Like These'' (2005). Saint Paul, Minn: Graywolf Press. * ''Black Diamond'' (2013). London: Faber and Faber. In 2017 Pharos Editions published a collection of Ingalls' stories selected and introduced by Daniel Handler under the title ''Three Masquerades: Novellas'' ().

References

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ingalls, Rachel 1940 births 2019 deaths 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American women writers 21st-century American novelists 21st-century American women writers American emigrants to England American women novelists Deaths from cancer in England Deaths from multiple myeloma Novelists from Massachusetts Radcliffe College alumni Writers from Boston Writers from Cambridge, Massachusetts Writers from London

Personal life

Literary reputation

Bibliography

References

Further reading

Notes