Margaret Craven
Margaret Craven was an American author born on March 13, 1901, in Helena, Montana, and spent much of her life in Washington and California. Raised in a family with a legal background—her father was a judge—Craven pursued her passion for writing early on. She graduated with great distinction from Stanford University in 1924 and began her career as a columnist for the San Jose Mercury before transitioning into freelance writing. Over the years, she published numerous short stories in prominent magazines, yet her most significant work came later in life.
At nearly seventy, she released her debut novel, *I Heard the Owl Call My Name* (1967), which explores themes of mortality and cultural identity through the experiences of an Anglican priest among the Kwakiutl Indians of British Columbia. The novel garnered widespread acclaim, selling over a million copies and inspiring a television adaptation. Craven continued to write, producing a second novel and an autobiography, but none achieved the same impact as her first. She passed away on July 19, 1980, and her legacy endures, particularly through her poignant exploration of human experiences and cultural interactions.
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Subject Terms
Margaret Craven
Writer
- Born: March 13, 1901
- Birthplace: Helena, Montana
- Died: July 19, 1980
- Place of death: Sacramento, California
Biography
Margaret Craven was born on March 13, 1901, in Helena, Montana, and was raised in the Puget Sound area of Washington state and in Sacramento, California, where she lived most of her life. Her father, Arthur John Craven, was a judge and her mother, Clara Emily Kerr Craven, was a homemaker. From an early age, Craven knew she would be a writer. After high school she studied English at Stanford University and graduated “with great distinction” in 1924.
Her first job after college was as a columnist and editorial writer for the San Jose Mercury from 1924 to 1928. Wanting to write fiction, she left her position with the newspaper and set out to earn her living as a freelance writer. She wrote dozens of short stories over the next thirteen years, publishing many of them in important national magazines, including Collier’s and Ladies’ Home Journal. In 1941, she began an association with the Saturday Evening Post, publishing feature articles and fiction there until 1962.
Craven’s first novel, I Heard the Owl Call My Name (1967), written when she was almost seventy years old, was her most important work. It tells the story of a dying Anglican priest in the central coastal area of British Columbia and the Kwakiutl Indians he ministers to as they struggle to retain their tribal identity in the 1960’s. Craven was an avid traveler, and many of the details and experiences in the novel are based on four months she spent living with the Kwakiutl. An unsympathetic British anthropologist who appears in the novel is based on her own appearance, clothing, and difficulty learning the language of the Kwakiutl. The character of the minister, however, was inspired by a story about a real priest in British Columbia she had written for the Saturday Evening Post.
Craven published another novel, Walk Gently This Good Earth (1977), about a family struggling through the first half of the twentieth century, but it was not as well regarded as her first. In 1980 she published an autobiography, Again Calls the Owl, which included updated information about the Kwakiutl village that provided the setting for I Heard the Owl Call My Name. Her final book, The Home Front (1981), is a posthumous collection of short stories, mostly from the Saturday Evening Post, dating back to the 1940’s. Craven died on July 19, 1980, in Sacramento.
I Heard the Owl Call My Name has achieved great popular and critical success in North American and worldwide, praised for its gentle and insightful treatment of death, cultural clash, and religion. Craven tried unsuccessfully to find an American publisher for the novel in the 1960’s, and finally published it in Canada. When it was published in the United States in 1973, it became an immediate best-seller. It has sold more than one million copies, and was adapted as a television film that aired in 1973.