Signe Toksvig

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Signe Toksvig with Frank O'Connor, 1936

Signe Toksvig (1891–1983) was a Danish writer. Her articles were published in The New York Times, the Nation, The Atlantic, and other periodicals. She also published several books, including biographies of Hans Christian Andersen and Emanuel Swedenborg. Her life and work, and obstacles she encountered, has also been the focus of scholarship by others.[1] All her writings were in English.[1]: 448 

She is the great aunt of Sandi Toksvig.[2]

Life

Toksvig's short story "The Devil's Martyr" was cover-featured on the June 1928 Weird Tales

At age 14, Toksvig emigrated with her family from Denmark to the United States.[1]: 448  She graduated from Cornell in 1916, and then worked as an assistant editor at The New Republic. In 1918, she married the journal's founder, Francis Hackett, an Irish writer and literary critic.[3] They moved to Ireland in 1926 and lived there until 1937, when they moved to Denmark. They spent the Second World War in the United States, but returned to Europe and Denmark in the 1950s.[1]: 448 

During her senior year at Cornell, she was the editor-in-chief (and one of the founders) of the student publication The Cornell Women's Review.[4] She was also a member of Der Hexenkreis,[5] the USA's first honor society founded for women, by women. Der Hexenkreis was founded in 1892 and became coeducational in 1970.[6]

In 1943 she and her husband lived in Newton, Connecticut and she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for the academic year 1943–1944. The fellowship supported her work on her biography of Emanuel Swedenborg. The goal of the biography was "to interpret the kind of man he was, with some reference to his scientific achievements but with special emphasis on his ideas concerning human survival after death, linked to a comparison of modern ideas on the same subject, and to be written from a nontheological point of view."[5]

Bibliography

Novels

  • Toksvig, Signe (1927). The last devil. New York: John Day.
  • Toksvig, Signe (1937). Eve's doctor. New York: Harcourt.
  • Toksvig, Signe (1938). Port of refuge. London: Faber and Faber.
  • Toksvig, Signe (1941). Life boat. London: Faber and Faber.

Biographies

Articles

  • Signe Toksvig (September 30, 1945). "Aldous Huxley's prescriptions for spiritual myopia". The New York Times. p. 117.

As editor

Critical studies, reviews and biography of Toksvig

References

  1. ^ a b c d Lis Pihl (1999). "'A muzzle made in Ireland': Irish censorship and Signe Toksvig". Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review. 88 (352). Irish Province of the Society of Jesus: 448–457. JSTOR 30093536.
  2. ^ QI January 2018
  3. ^ "The Lilliput Press". lilliputpress.ie. Archived from the original on 28 May 2012. Retrieved 1 September 2015.
  4. ^ "The Review". The Cornell Women's Review. I (1): 39. November 1915.
  5. ^ a b "Alumni Get Guggenheim Awards". Cornell Alumni News. XLV (28): 365. May 13, 1943.
  6. ^ Reynolds, Nick (2017). "Secret Societies: A primer on the elite groups at Cornell University". Ithaca Times.
  7. ^ Includes several letters to Toksvig.

External links

Retrieved from "https://mdwiki.org/wiki/Signe_Toksvig"