Rachel Ingalls

Rachel Holmes Ingalls (13 May 1940 – 6 March 2019)[1] was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards.[2][3] She won the 1970 Authors' Club First Novel Award for Theft. Her novella Mrs. Caliban was published in 1982, and her book of short stories Times Like These in 2005.

Rachel Ingalls
BornRachel Holmes Ingalls
(1940-05-13)May 13, 1940
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
DiedMarch 6, 2019(2019-03-06) (aged 78)
London
OccupationNovelist
NationalityAmerican
Alma materRadcliffe College
Period1970–present
Notable worksMrs. Caliban

Ingalls's short story "Last Act: The Madhouse" inspired the story of the character Jean in the 1997 film Chinese Box by Wayne Wang.[4]

Personal life

Ingalls was born on May 13, 1940, in Boston and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where her father was a professor at Harvard.[5] She received her B. A. degree from Radcliffe College in 1964, and immigrated to England.[3] She is the daughter of Phyllis (née Day) and the late Sanskritist Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Sr., and the sister of the computer scientist Dan Ingalls.[6][7]

Literary reputation

Ingalls' reputation is characterised by deep admiration and acclaim but also a certain degree of obscurity.[8] 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.[9] She was awarded the Authors' Club First Novel Award for her book Theft.[10] 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.[9] Earlier praise for Mrs Caliban came from John Updike.[11] The writer Daniel Handler is an advocate of Ingalls' work.[12][13]

Bibliography
  • Theft (1970). London: Faber. ISBN 9780571139910
  • The Man Who Was Left Behind and Other Stories (1974). London: Faber. ISBN 0571104800
  • Mrs. Caliban (1982). London: Faber. ISBN 0571118267
  • Binstead's Safari (1983). London: Dent. ISBN 0460022512
  • Three of a Kind (1985). London: Faber. ISBN 0571136060
  • The Pearlkillkers (1986). London: Faber. ISBN 0571137954
  • The End of Tragedy (1987). London: Faber. ISBN 0571148409
  • Four Stories (1987). London: Faber. ISBN 0571145469
  • Days Like Today (2000). London: Faber. ISBN 0571201105
  • Times Like These (2005). Saint Paul, Minn: Graywolf Press. ISBN 9781555974312
  • Black Diamond (2013). London: Faber and Faber. ISBN 9780571300112

In 2017 Pharos Editions published a collection of Ingalls' stories selected and introduced by Daniel Handler under the title Three Masquerades: Novellas (ISBN 9781940436449).[14]

gollark: Oh, those are less bad.
gollark: Everything's soldered to the mainboard.
gollark: And ~0 repairability.
gollark: Yes, the new ones just have *entirely* USB-C?
gollark: I mean, if they got them for free for some unfathomable reason, sure I guess?

References
  1. Seelye, Katharine Q. (March 19, 2019). "Rachel Ingalls, Rediscovered Author of 'Mrs. Caliban,' Dies at 78". nytimes.com. Archived from the original on March 20, 2019. Retrieved March 20, 2019.
  2. Park, Ed (December 20, 2005). "They Never Forget". Village Voice. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
  3. Rachel Ingalls in Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series, 2007
  4. Phipps, Keith (April 29, 1998). "Wayne Wang: Boxed in". A.V. Club. Retrieved February 14, 2017.
  5. "The Hallucinatory Realism of Rachel Ingalls," The New Yorker, February 25, 2019.
  6. Eck, Diana; Frye, Richard; Stewart, Zeph; Tu, Wei-ming; Witzel, Michael (February 18, 2010). "Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  7. Sokolov, Raymond (March 15, 1988). "Bookshelf: Dorothy and the Frogman". The Wall Street Journal – via Proquest.
  8. Fowler, Christopher (March 11, 2012). "Invisible Ink: No 114 - Rachel Ingalls". Independent. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  9. Dorris, Michael (December 28, 1986). "Love with the Proper Amphibian". The New York Times. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  10. International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004 (19th ed.). London: Europa. 2003. p. 267. ISBN 9781857431797.
  11. Updike, John (1983). "Review of Mrs. Caliban". New Yorker: 87.
  12. Cruickshank, Noah (February 13, 2017). "Daniel Handler tells us what not to read on Valentine's Day". A.V. Club. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  13. Handler, Daniel (February 14, 2017). "Daniel Handler on the Best Writer You Don't Know: Rachel Ingalls". Literary Hub. Retrieved February 16, 2017.
  14. Kirkus Review (February 14, 2017). "Three Masquerades". Kirkus. Retrieved February 14, 2017.

Further reading

Notes
  1. Online version is titled "The hallucinatory realism of Rachel Ingalls".
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