E. L. Konigsburg
E. L. Konigsburg, born Elaine Lobl Konigsburg on February 10, 1930, in New York City, was a prominent author and illustrator of children's and young-adult literature. Growing up in Farrell, Pennsylvania, she initially pursued a career in the sciences, earning degrees in biology and chemistry before transitioning into writing and art. After marrying David Konigsburg and raising three children, she began to focus on her writing career once her children were in school.
Her breakthrough came with the publication of her first book, *Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth*, in 1967, followed closely by her most famous work, *From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler*, which won the Newbery Award in 1968. Notably, she is the only author to have received both the Newbery Award and a Newbery Honor in the same year. Konigsburg was a pioneer in the young-adult fiction genre, targeting adolescent readers with her unique blend of mystery and personal development. Her contributions to literature have had a lasting impact, earning her a second Newbery Award in 1997 for *The View from Saturday*.
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E. L. Konigsburg
Author
- Born: February 10, 1930
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: April 19, 2013
Biography
Elaine Lobl Konigsburg, better known as E. L. Konigsburg, was born on February 10, 1930, in New York City. Her parents were Arnold Lobl, a businessman, and Beulah Klein Lobl. She and her two sisters grew up in the small town of Farrell, Pennsylvania. She worked for a year as a bookkeeper in the Shenango Valley Provision Company, a meat plant, where she made the acquaintance of David Konigsburg, the owner’s brother. She studied biology and chemistry at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and earned money for tuition by waiting tables, doing laundry, and holding other jobs. A few months after graduation in 1952, she and David Konigsburg were married. She studied organic chemistry for two years at the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate school but decided her future was not in chemistry. When her husband completed his doctorate in psychology in 1954, they moved to Jacksonville, Florida, where she taught science at Bartram, a private school, and he worked as an industrial psychologist. When the couple’s first son, Paul, was born, Konigsburg became a full-time homemaker and mother; in a few years two more children, Laurie and Ross, were born. Konigsburg began painting while the children were young. The family moved back to New York in 1962, and she studied at the Art Students League in New York City on Saturdays and began to think about writing and illustrating children’s books. But that dream had to wait; Konigsburg did not begin writing until her children were older.
Once her children were all old enough to be at school all day, Konigsburg began a routine of writing in the mornings, reading her new material to the children over lunch, and then doing housework and errands in the afternoons. Once she had a manuscript ready, she started work on the illustrations, which was a time-consuming process. On this schedule, however, she prepared and managed to sell her first book, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth (1967), based on her daughter Laurie’s experiences trying to make friends in a new school. That same year she completed her second book, From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which would become her most successful. From the beginning, Konigsburg’s books have appeared under the name E. L. Konigsburg; her first editors believed that more boys would be drawn to her combinations of mystery and personal development if they did not know the stories had been written by a woman. Konigsburg won the Newbery Award for From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in 1968, the same year that Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was a Newbery Honor Book. She is the only writer ever to receive both honors in the same year. In 1997, more than a dozen books later, she won the Newbery Award again, for The View from Saturday (1996). Konigsburg was one of the first writers to specifically target adolescents, and she helped to create the genre now called young-adult fiction.