(1926–87). The Canadian writer Margaret Laurence is best known for her stories and novels portraying strong women striving for self-realization in the male-dominated world of western Canada. She also wrote a number of books for children.
Jean Margaret Wemyss was born on July 18, 1926, in Neepawa, Man. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Manitoba in 1947, the same year she married John Fergus Laurence, an engineer. In the 1950s the couple lived in Africa, and Laurence’s first publications reflect on her experiences there. The novel This Side Jordan (1960) deals with the exchange of power between old colonials and native Africans in the emerging nation of Ghana. The Prophet’s Camel Bell (1963; published in the United States as New Wind in a Dry Land) is an account of her years in Somaliland (now Somalia). The Tomorrow-Tamer (1963), also set in Ghana, is a collection of short stories.
Laurence’s next three novels—The Stone Angel (1964), A Jest of God (1966; made into the motion picture Rachel, Rachel in 1968), and The Fire Dwellers (1969)—are set in the fictional Canadian prairie town of Manawaka. Each centers on a woman of considerable strength of character. The short stories in A Bird in the House (1970) and the novel The Diviners (1974) are also about Manawaka. Laurence published her first children’s book, Jason’s Quest, in 1970 and a collection of occasional essays, Heart of a Stranger, in 1976. She twice received the Governor-General’s award for fiction. Laurence died on Jan. 5, 1987, in Lakefield, Ont.