Grace Livingston Hill: Gracious Writer for God
Betty Steele Everett
1997, Christian Literature Crusade
This short biography is a retelling or paraphrase of the earlier Karr and Munce biographies. If you read them back to back, you’ll notice the similarity.
Corrections to keep in mind as you read:
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- Grace’s “Auntie Belle”, Isabella Macdonald Alden, is incorrectly called Isabelle.
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- Grace’s first book, “The Esselstynes”, was not produced as a single gift copy as originally thought. We have learned in the years after this bio was released that The Esselstynes was published in multiple editions by her aunt’s publisher as part of a children’s series. Read more about it here.
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- She speaks of “a little” insurance money following Rev. Hill’s death, but we know that Grace actually received quite a bit of money. She was able to move the family to Swarthmore and build a home after his death.
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- The book seems to mix up the publisher timeline and implies that Grace “left” one publisher to go to another. The fact is—Grace submitted manuscripts to many outlets and when one of them was interested, she signed a book contract. She eventually settled long-term with J. B. Lippincott Company.
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- Everett mistakenly assumes that biographer Jean Karr was a woman.
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- In her account of “Marcia Schuyler”, the author writes as though Marcia Schuyler and David Spafford actually existed, but they did not. Grace took the last name “Spafford” from her mother’s family (it was Grace’s grandmother’s maiden name) and “Schuyler” from way back in the Livingston family tree. She loved to use family names for her characters, but these two are definitely fictional. The basis for the book was taken from family lore, but it is not a literal re-telling of these family events.