Spotlight on Margery Williams Bianco

Margery Williams Bianco

Margery Williams Bianco wrote The Velveteen Rabbit in 1922 when she was 41 years old. A professional writer since the age of nineteen, she wrote a number of children’ sbooks and novels, but none achieved the fame or the classical status of The Velveteen Rabbit. Born in London, Williams Bianco developed a passion for reading and writing at an early age and carried that with her throughout her lifetime. She and her family moved to the United States when she was 9 years old, where she lived until she was 19 years old. She then returned to London to start her writing career.

She married her husband Francisco Bianco three years later, and had two children. She put her writing career on hold to become a full-time mother. Margery and her family left the war-torn Europe and settled in the United States in 1918 and by 1922 had resumed her writing career, publishing her first American book, The Velveteen Rabbit.

Margery spent the rest of her life writing children’s books and young adult novels. Her most notable book after The Velveteen Rabbit was Winterbound, a young adult novel that was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1937. She died in 1944 at the age of 63.