Margaret Warner Morley

Cover of Donkey John of the toy valley. Chicago A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909

Margaret Warner Morley (February 17, 1858 in Montrose, Iowa - December 12, 1923 in Washington, D.C.) was an American educator, biologist and writer, author of many books on nature and biology for children and novel writer.

Biography

She grew up in Brooklin and graduated from Hunter College in New York. Morley was a suffragette. She worked as an educator in several schools but her career of teacher was overshadowed by her books. ^[1]

As early as 1890 she visited Tryon, North Carolina with the painter Amelia Watson where she resided in the cottage of playwright William Gillette. She finally acquired her own home in Tryon where she lived for many years.

In one of her many trips she went to Europe to the Val Gardena the vally of toy carvers where she was inspired to write the novel Donkey John of the toy valley.

Some of her documents ar held at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center Margaret Warner Morley Collection at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center at Hartford, CT. The collection consists of travel logs and sketchbooks of rural North Carolina, and book manuscripts. The North Carolina Museum of History owns a collection of the 244 original photographs that Morley donated to the museum in 1914 ^[2]

Writings

• Song of Life 1891
• Physical culture 1893
• Flowers and Their Friends 1897
• A few familiar flowers: how to love them at home or in school 1897
• Seed babies 1898
• Little Wanderers 1899
• Down north and up along 1900
• Wasps and their ways 1901
• Insect Folk 1903 ^[3]
• Little Mitchell, the Story of a Mountain Squirrel 1904
• The Renewal of Life: How and When to Tell the Story to the Young 1906 ^[4]
• Donkey John of the toy valley. Chicago A. C. McClurg & Co. 1909 ^[5]
• Grasshopper Land 1910
• The Carolina Mountains, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co (1913)^[6]
• Will o' the wasps 1913
• The Bee People 1914
• the Apple-Tree Sprite 1915

Drawings by Morley from the original Val Gardena toys from Donkey John of the toy valley

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Bibliography

Michael J MacCue, Margaret Morley in Tryon artists, 1892-1942. Columbus, N.C.: Condar, 2001.

Weblinks

• Margaret Morley on WikiFolk South

References

1. ^ Encyclopaedia Britannica
2. ^ Photographs by Margaret Warner Morley in the North Carolina Museum of History
3. ^ The Insect Folk - online book
4. ^ The Renewal of Life: How and When to Tell the Story to the Young - online book
5. ^ Donkey John of the toy valley - online book
6. ^ The Carolina Mountains

Persondata
Name	Warner Morley, Margaret
Alternative names
Short description	Educator scholar and writer
Date of birth	17 February 1858
Place of birth	Montrose, Iowa
Date of death	12 December 1923
Place of death	Washington, D.C.