Margaret Laurence

Tanya Butler

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.1.2: Canadian Writing and Culture (Anglophone): The Twentieth Century and beyond, 1900-present.
Vol. editors: Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Glen Nichols (Mount Allison University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Wendy Roy (University of Saskatchewan), Denis Salter (McGill University), Sean Seeger (University of Essex), Karis Shearer (University of British Columbia)

Dates

Born 18 Jul 1926
Died 5 Jan 1987
Activity 1954-1987

Places

Born in Canada
Active in Canada; Ghana

Activities

Primary

Novelist
Story-writer

Resources

Jean Margaret Wemyss was born in the small prairie town of Neepawa, Manitoba, on July 18, 1926, to a middle-class family of Lowland Scots and Irish descent. Her mother, Verna Simpson Wemyss, a music teacher, died when Laurence was four and her father, Robert Wemyss, a lawyer, died when she was ten. Despite the fact that Laurence was raised by a loving aunt (who became her stepmother), her fiction's concern with themes of disinheritance, dispossession, roots, and orphanage testifies to the long-lasting effect her parents' deaths had on her. After her father's death, Laurence and her family lived with her maternal grandfather, John Simpson, whose autocratic and repressive character made a deep impression on the sensitive child, an impression partially manifested in the character of Timothy Connor from A Bird in the House. Both Laurence's...

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1150 words

Citation: Butler, Tanya. "Margaret Laurence". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 November 2001 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2630, accessed 12 December 2025.]