Vining, Elizabeth Gray

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VINING, Elizabeth Gray

Born 6 October 1902, Germantown, Pennsylvania

Also writes under: Elizabeth Janet Gray

Daughter of John G. and Anne Izard Gray; married Morgan Vining, 1929 (died 1934)

Elizabeth Gray Vining, of Scottish descent, was born into a Quaker family and a Quaker environment. She attended Germantown schools and later received a B.A. from Bryn Mawr (1923) and a B.S. in library science from Drexel Institute in Philadelphia in 1926 (now Drexel University). Her husband was a professor at the University of North Carolina. After his death in an automobile accident in 1934, Vining traveled widely, doing research for her historical novels. When World War II made travel impossible, Vining worked for the American Friends Service Committee as a writer of reports, articles, and appeals.

In 1946 Vining was selected by American officials, at the behest of Emperor Hirohito, to tutor Crown Prince Akihito of Japan. She was the first foreigner permitted inside the living quarters of the imperial palace. Vining was the tutor of Akihito's brother and three sisters as well, and became so close to the cloistered imperial family that she played cards with the emperor and empress. Vining published two accounts of her time in Japan, the bestselling Windows for the Crown Prince (1952) and Return to Japan (1960), the story of her return as a visitor to the country she had left 10 years earlier. Interest in Vining and these books was revived when Akihito ascended to the throne in 1988. Vining also authored other nonfiction works, which were imbued with her Quaker heritage. These include Contributions of the Quakers (1939), Friend of Life: The Biography of Rufus M. Jones (1958), and her autobiography, Quiet Pilgrimmage (1970).

Vining is a master of the art of recreating a historical period, with all its sights, sounds, and smells, and of creating realistic, believable characters to people her recreated worlds. Her greatest achievement in historical fiction for children, Adam of the Road (1942), won a Newbery award for excellence. It is the story of a 14th-century boy, son of a minstrel, who loses and then regains his father and his dog. Adam's journey through southeastern England is filled with fragments of English ballads and French lays and with fascinating details of life in inns, on farms, and in monastery schools.

Whether she is writing for children or for adults, whether her treatment is essentially biographical, as in Flora: A Biography (1966)—the story of Flora MacDonald, who is credited with saving the life of Charles II—or novelistic, as in Take Heed of Loving Me (1964)—based on the life of John Donne—Vining brings the same careful attention to finding and evaluating both primary and secondary sources. Moreover, her gift for creating characters allows her to make Flora, Donne, William Penn, and the young Walter Scott into real people rather than historical abstractions.

Vining has had similar success with the contemporary family story, exemplified by The Fair Adventure (1940) and Sandy (1945), winner of the Herald Tribune Spring Festival Award.

Although Vining has made important contributions as a chronicler of the lives of important Quakers and of the education of the Crown Prince of Japan, her greatest contribution to contemporary letters is to be found in her juvenile fiction, especially her historical novels. Vining lives in retirement in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

Other Works:

Meredith's Ann (1929). Tilly Tod (1929). Meggy MacIntosh (1930). Tangle Garden (1932). Jane Hope (1933). Young Walter Scott (1935). Beppy Marlowe of Charles Town (1936). Penn (1938). Anthology with Comments (1942). The Virginia Exiles (1955). The Cheerful Heart (1959). I Will Adventure (1962). I, Roberta (1969). The Taken Girl (1973). Mr. Whittier (1974). Being Seventy: The Measure of a Year (1978). Harnessing Pegasus: Inspiration and Meditation (1978). John Woolman, Quaker Saint (1981). A Quest There Is (1982).