Giles, Janice Holt 1909-1979

The novelist Janice Holt Giles was born March 28, 1905, in Altus, Arkansas, and grew up in both Arkansas and Oklahoma. She attended the University of Arkansas and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1941, she moved to Kentucky, working in Frankfort and Louisville. She later met and married native Kentuckian, Henry Giles, and settled on a farm near his boyhood home in Adair County. Her first novel, THE ENDURING HILLS, was published in 1950, after which she became a full-time writer. Her earlier historical novels were well researched and historically accurate works about the founding and early settlement of Kentucky. Later novels took the descendents of those Kentucky characters to the Arkansas and Oklahoma frontier. Giles died June 1, 1979 and was buried near her home in Adair County, Kentucky.

From the description of Janice Holt Giles letter, 1954 Oct. 5. (Kentucky Historical Society). WorldCat record id: 38744761

Author.

Janice Holt was born in Kansas and spent her childhood in the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Her family later moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Janice met and married her first husband. The couple later divorced, and Janice moved to Louisville, Ky. to work for the dean of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. During World War II she met Army sergeant Henry Giles; they married in 1945, and afterwards moved to a farm on Green River, in Adair County, Ky., where Henry's family had lived for seven generations. Janice began a prolific writing career, producing some twenty books, most of them fiction about the people and the history of the region.

From the description of Janice Holt Giles papers, 1949-1966. (University of Kentucky Libraries). WorldCat record id: 13766715