Rachel Ingalls Explained

Birth Name:	Rachel Holmes Ingalls
Birth Date:	13 May 1940
Birth Place:	Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Death Place:	London, England
Occupation:	Novelist
Period:	1970–2019
Notableworks:	Mrs. Caliban
Education:	Radcliffe College (BA)

Rachel Holmes Ingalls (13 May 1940 – 6 March 2019)^[1] was an American-born author who had lived in the United Kingdom from 1965 onwards.^{[2] [3]} She won the 1970 Authors' Club First Novel Award for Theft. Her novella Mrs. Caliban was published in 1982, and her book of short stories Times Like These in 2005.

Ingalls's short story "Last Act: The Madhouse" inspired the story of the character Jean in the 1997 film Chinese Box by Wayne Wang.^[4]

Biography

Ingalls was born on 13 May 1940, in Boston and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts where her father was a professor at Harvard.^[5] She received her B. A. degree from Radcliffe College in 1964, and immigrated to England.^[3]

She was the daughter of Phyllis (née Day) and the late Sanskritist Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Sr., and the sister of the computer scientist Dan Ingalls.^{[6] [7]}

Ingalls died from multiple myeloma under hospice care in London on 6 March 2019, at age 78.^[1]

Literary reputation

Ingalls' reputation is characterised by deep admiration and acclaim but also a certain degree of obscurity.^[8] She referred to her limited commercial success as being due to the ''very odd, unsalable length" of her books, which tend to be story collections or novellas.^[9] She was awarded the Authors' Club First Novel Award for her book Theft.^[10] In 1986 the British Book Marketing Council named the hitherto little known Mrs Caliban as one of the 20 greatest American novels since World War II, sparking wider interest in both book and writer. Earlier praise for Mrs Caliban came from John Updike.^[11] The writer Daniel Handler is an advocate of Ingalls' work.^{[12] [13]} In an overview of her work written for Book Post, Joy Williams wrote, "[Ingalls] had a keen sense of the unrealness of people and event, the questionableness at the heart of the world."^[14]

Bibliography

• Theft (1970). London: Faber.
• The Man Who Was Left Behind and Other Stories (1974). London: Faber.
• Mrs. Caliban (1982). London: Faber.
• Binstead's Safari (1983). London: Dent.
• Three of a Kind (1985). London: Faber.
• The Pearlkillers (1986). London: Faber.
• The End of Tragedy (1987). London: Faber.
• Four Stories (1987). London: Faber.
• Days Like Today (2000). London: Faber.
• Times Like These (2005). Saint Paul, Minn: Graywolf Press.
• Black Diamond (2013). London: Faber and Faber.
• In the act, New York : New Directions Publishing, 2023,
• No love lost, selected novellas ; with a foreword by Patricia Lockwood, London : Faber & Faber, 2023,

In 2017 Pharos Editions published a collection of Ingalls' stories selected and introduced by Daniel Handler under the title Three Masquerades: Novellas .^[15]

Further reading

• Haas, Lidija . 4 March 2019 . Something in the water : the hallucinatory realism of Rachel Ingalls . The Critics. A Critic at Large . The New Yorker . 95 . 2 . 61–63 . ^[16]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Rachel Ingalls, Rediscovered Author of 'Mrs. Caliban,' Dies at 78 . Katharine Q. . Seelye . 19 March 2019 . . 20 March 2019. https://archive.today/20190320085120/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/obituaries/rachel-ingalls-dead.html . 20 March 2019 . live.
2. News: They Never Forget. Park. Ed. 20 December 2005. Village Voice. 14 February 2017.
3. http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-2591000073/ingalls-rachel-1940.html Rachel Ingalls
4. Web site: Wayne Wang: Boxed in. Phipps. Keith. 29 April 1998. A.V. Club. 14 February 2017.
5. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/03/04/the-hallucinatory-realism-of-rachel-ingalls "The Hallucinatory Realism of Rachel Ingalls,"
6. Web site: Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls. Eck. Diana. Frye. Richard. 18 February 2010. Harvard Gazette. 16 February 2017. Stewart. Zeph. Tu. Wei-ming. Witzel. Michael.
7. News: Bookshelf: Dorothy and the Frogman. Sokolov. Raymond. 15 March 1988. The Wall Street Journal. Proquest.
8. Web site: Invisible Ink: No 114 - Rachel Ingalls. Fowler. Christopher. 11 March 2012. Independent. 16 February 2017.
9. Web site: Love with the Proper Amphibian. Dorris. Michael. 28 December 1986. The New York Times. 16 February 2017.
10. Book: International Who's Who of Authors and Writers 2004. Europa. 2003. 9781857431797. 19th. London. 267.
11. Updike. John. 1983. Review of Mrs. Caliban. New Yorker. 87.
12. Web site: Daniel Handler tells us what not to read on Valentine's Day. Cruickshank. Noah. 13 February 2017. A.V. Club. 16 February 2017.
13. Web site: Daniel Handler on the Best Writer You Don't Know: Rachel Ingalls. Handler. Daniel. 14 February 2017. Literary Hub. 16 February 2017.
14. Web site: Review: Joy Williams on Rachel Ingalls. Williams. Joy. 20 June 2023. 3 July 2023.
15. Web site: Three Masquerades. Kirkus Review. 14 February 2017. Kirkus. 14 February 2017.
16. Online version is titled "The hallucinatory realism of Rachel Ingalls".