Discipline: Literature

Agnes Turnbull

Discipline: Literature
Region: PENNSYLVANNIA
MacDowell Fellowships: 1937

Agnes Turnbull (1888-1982) was a bestselling American writer, most noted for her works of historical fiction based in her native Western Pennsylvania. She attended the village school, and went on to boarding school before enrolling at the Teachers College at what is now called Indiana University of Pennsylvania, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She also attended the University of Chicago before starting her career as a high school English teacher. Turnbull had her first short story published by The American Magazine in 1920, and published further short stories regularly until 1936, when she published her first novel, The Rolling Years. While some critics regarded the morality of her writing as old-fashioned, she and others attributed it to a hopeful outlook on life.

Portrait by Richard's Studio

Studios

Cheney

Agnes Turnbull worked in the Cheney studio.

Cheney Studio was given to MacDowell by Mrs. Benjamin P. Cheney and Mrs. Karl Kauffman. Like Barnard Studio, Cheney is a low, broadly massed bungalow. Sited on a steep westward slope, its porches are supported on wooden posts and fieldstone with lattices. Although it still retains its appealing character, the original design of the shingled building…

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