Butler, Francelia, 1913-1998

Founder and editor-in-chief, Children's Literature (Yale University Press), and author of Skipping Around the World: the Ritual Nature of Folk Rhymes (1989), Reflections on Literature for Children (1984), and other works. Contributor to the Paris Herald in the 1930s before her marraige to Jerome Butler (d. 1949).

Francelia Butler was born in Elyria, Ohio. She attended Oberlin College where she received her undergraduate in the Classics, and later got her doctorate in Renaissance literature at the Univeristy of Virginia. She moved on to teach Englsih at the University of Tennessee and the University of Connecticut. An activist throughout her life, Butler struggeld to revolutionize the study of children's literature as a formal collegiate discipline. Butler was instrumental in creating the Children's Literature journal and the founding of the Children's Literature Association in 1972. She died in 1998 in a nursing home in Windham, Conn. at the age of 85. Biographical Source: Thomas, Robert MCG. III, Francelia Butler Is Dead at 85; Children's Literature Champion, New York Times, 25 Sept. 1998. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C02EED71739F936A1575AC0A96E958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1 (Accessed 24 Jan. 2008)

Teacher of children's literature at University of Connecticut.

When Francelia (McWilliams) Butler was a young child, Harriet Taylor Upton, suffragist and chair of the Republican National Committee, visited her family. Seeing that Francelia had an unhappy family life, Upton corresponded with her and sent her stories until Upton's death in 1945. Butler graduated from Oberlin College, and in the 1930s lived in Paris. She wrote for the Paris Herald and married newsroom staffer Jerome Butler in 1939. They returned to the United States in 1940, and had a daughter. In the early 1960s Butler, by then widowed, earned a doctorate in 17th century English literature from the University of Virginia. Since 1975 she has been on the faculty of the University of Connecticut, where she has championed the study of children's literature. The author of The Lucky Piece, An Autobiographical Novel (1984), and Skipping Around the World: The Ritual Nature of Folk Rhymes (1989), Butler helped found the Modern Language Association's Division on Children's Literature; the Children's Literature Foundation; Children's Literature, a journal; the Foundation for Contributed Thought on Peace; International Peace Games; and the Connecticut League against Age Discrimination.