Hale, Nancy, 1908-1988

Nancy Hale was the granddaughter of Edward Everett Hale.

American author.

Nancy Hale (b. 1908, d. 1988) was an author, whose books include Mary Cassatt (1975) and the Young Die Good (1932). She is the daughter of painter Philip Leslie Hale.

Author.

Nancy Hale was born Anna Westcott Hale in Boston, MA, 1908. She began writing at an early age, producing a family newspaper at 8 and publishing her first story in the Boston Herald at age 11. She studied art at the Boston Museum School (1926-28). In 1928, she married Taylor Scott Hardin and moved to New York City where she was hired to work in the art department at Vogue, then as editor and writer. While working for Vogue, Vanity Fair (1933-34), and the New York Times (1934), Hale also wrote fiction for a variety of magazines. Her first novel The Young Die Good was published in 1932. In 1933, she won the O. Henry Memorial Award Prize for her story "To the Invader." Hale divorced Hardin in 1934 and married Charles Christian Wertenbaker in 1935, whom she divorced in 1941. Hale's most popular novel, The Prodigal Women, was published in 1942. Also in that year, Hale married Fredson Thayer Bowers and settled with him to Charlottesville, VA. Hale is perhaps best known for her short stories many of which were published in the New Yorker and in collected works. She was a lecturer at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, 1959-65; wrote a book on writing, The Realities of Fiction (1961), as well as a biography of Mary Cassatt (1975), and several children's stories. Nancy Hale died in Charlottesville, VA, 1988.