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The
Banta Award 1985 Mrs.
Pat: the Life of Mrs. Patrick Campbell
The
1985 Banta Award BOOK "The biographer," he states, "may be as imaginative as he/she pleases -- the more imaginative the better -- in the way in which he/she brings together his/her materials... but the biographer must not imagine his/her materials." Margot Peters' biography, Mrs. Pat: the Life of Mrs. Patrick Campbell, exemplifies these beliefs about biography and the biographer. She has written the life of a woman whose "self-destructiveness was at war with her impulse to survive." In doing so, Peters has struck a balance which portrays Mrs. Pat's eccentricities and her faults, her generosity and her penchant for debt, her wit and her rudeness; her genius in a role if she liked it, her disruptiveness if she didn't -- in short, her very humanity. George Bernard Shaw once called her an "illiterate monster." In their long correspondence she addressed him as "Dear Liar." They carried on a love affair for 30 years, consummated only with words. At age 75, the actress who played the cockney flower girl in Shaw's "Pygmalion," died alone and penniless. It was Shaw who paid for her burial. She is remembered as the original Paula Tanqueray in Arthur Wing Pjnero's play, "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray," produced in 1893. She was 28 years old. Twenty-one years later, she played Eliza Dolittle in "Pygmalion." She was 49 and "the days of the dew laps" had arrived. Seven years before her death she took her first screen test. Although a veteran of dozens of stage plays produced in the United States and Europe, she was terrified of the camera and never successfully made the transition from the stage to film. The Literary Awards Committee of the Wisconsin Library Association found Mrs. Pat to be the life of an actress who, along with many others, played a prominent role in the Victorian/Edwardian theater. No life can be lived in a vacuum. Margot Peters has placed Mrs. Pat in the context of the world she lived in, giving us not just the visible tapestry of her life, but the warp and woof of it as well. She allows Mrs. Pat and those around her to speak for themselves, imagining nothing, yet giving us "the entire human being." What more could we ask? The
AUTHOR Margot Peters was born and raised in Wausau, Wisconsin. She is the daughter of Edgar and Elsie McCullough. Her love of literature and writing, which is so evident in her published works, has its roots with her parents. She is a Wisconsin author in the truest sense of the term. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees are all from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Margot has taught at Northland College in Ashland and since 1963, has taught English Literature at UW-Whitewater where she is a full Professor. Her first book (1973) was a reworking of her PhD thesis, Charlotte Bronte: Style in the Novel. This was followed (1975) by Unquiet Soul: a Biography of Charlotte Bronte for which she received the Friends of American Writers cash award for the best work of prose that year. Bernard Shaw and the Actresses brought her the 1981 Banta Award from the Wisconsin Library Association and the George Freedley Memorial Award from the Theatre Library Association. In 1985, she was again the recipient of both awards for Mrs. Pat: the Life of Mrs. Patrick Campbell. In addition to these books, she has written numerous essays on George Bernard Shaw, Charlotte Bronte, women's studies, biography and detective fiction. She is currently doing research for her next book, a group biography of John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore. Since publication of Mrs. Pat, Margot has "been simply recovering." Her family -- husband Peter, children Marc and Claire, mother Elsie and collie Dandy -- has seen more of her. Her typewriter has had some rest, she has been able to relax and enjoy "the quiet of Lake Mills and her kind of people." 1985
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