Dates

• Existence: 1900 - 1985

Biography

Margaret Thomsen Raymond, young adult author, was born in Baltimore on July 4, 1900. She lived in Boston and Philadelphia and graduated from the Friends' Select School in Philadelphia. She also attended Columbia University. Her early career was as an editor, working at P.F. Volland & Company in Joliet, Illinois, and serving as associate editor for the 1939 and 1942 editions of Childcraft for the Quarrie Company in Chicago.

During the 1930s and early 1940s she published four books for older girls including Linnet on the Threshold (1930); the teenage love story A Bend in the Road (1934); and Aprilly Weather, a coming-of-age, high school novel published in 1940. As part of her ongoing interest in photography, Raymond collaborated with her friend, Freida Zylstra, on the 1941 story Skylark; A Story of a Girl Photographer Who Flew Over South America. During the 1930s she also wrote a series of biographical sketches with Edward Steiner which were published in the church school magazine The Portal. Some of the articles were illustrated by Margaret de Angeli, a noted children's illustrator.

In 1944 she married Frank Legare George, a poet who wrote under the pseudonym William Stephens. They lived in and around Chicago with his children Johanna, Kenneth, and Frank. She had a lifelong interest in poetry; in 1958 she had a poem accepted for Lyrical Iowa. After her husband's death in 1959 she continued her writing, producing poetry, short stories, magazine articles, and two books for Chicago's Michael Reese Hospital.

Later in her life, Raymond lived in a variety of places before settling in Burlington, Iowa. She continued to write extensively. She edited a volume of her husband's poetry published in 1978 by Ardis Publishers. A major effort during her later years was an unpublished manuscript, "Indoor Games for Indoor Children", with activities for children convalescing at home. She taught continuing education courses and was active in the Inter-Faith Council, the League of Women Voters, Friends of the Burlington Public Library, and the Unitarian Fellowship. She died February 9, 1985 in Burlington.

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