| Notes |
- Marian's beginnings were recounted in the literary notebooks she wrote during her lifetime. These have been collected as "Marian Engel's Notebooks", edited by Cristl Verduyn, and published in 1999 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Marian was born to a single 18 year old mother and was adopted at age 3. Her birth name was Ruth Freer. She had a fraternal twin sister, Lorna (or Eleanor) Freer. In her notebooks Marian stated that her birth mother was a graduate of Central Commerce High School, and that her mother, a widow, was an accountant working for Eaton's department store.
Marian lived with her Passmore family in various Ontario cities where her father taught high school: Port Arthur, London, Brantford, Galt, Hamilton and Sarnia. In her late teenage years, she wrote short stories and submitted them, with some success, to magazines, such as "Seventeen". Marian graduated with a B.A. in Language Studies in 1955 from McMaster University, and with a M.A. in Canadian Literature in 1957 from McGill University. At McGill, her thesis supervisor was a well-established writer, Hugh McLennan, who had a great influence on her later literary career. A collection of letters between McLennan and Marian is found in "Dear Hugh, Dear Marian: the McLennan-Engel Correspondence" (1995).
After her M.A., Marian taught in Westmount, Quebec, McGill University, University of Montana-Missoula, and at St. John's School in Nicosia, Cyprus. Marian was writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta in 1977-78 and at the University of Toronto in 1980-82.
In 1962 she met and married Howard Engel, a CBC radio producer at the time. They lived for a while in Cyprus, where Marian taught at St. Johns RAF School in Nicosia, and where Howard was working on a CBC documentary. After returning to Toronto, they had twin children in 1964. Marian and Howard divorced in 1977. Howard went on to become a successful writer of detective novels.
Marian became an acclaimed novelist and was an important part of the Canadian literary scene. In many of her novels, Marian exhibited a fascination for the "irrational" elements of life. One of her most famous novels, "Bear", won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1976. Besides novels, Marian published a number of magazine short stories and articles between 1972 and 1984.
Her published books were:
"No Clouds of Glory" (1968), re-issued As "Sarah Bastard's Notebook in 1974)
"The Honeyman Festival" (1970)
"Monodromos" (1973) (re-issued as "One Way Street" in 1975)
"Adventure at Moon Bay Towers" (1974) - a childrens' book
"Inside the Easter Egg" (1975) - short stories
"Joanne: the Last Days of a Modern Marriage" (1975)
"Bear" (1976)
"My Name is not Odessa Yarker" (1977) - a childrens' book
"The Glassy Sea" (1979)
"Lunatic Villas" (1981) - published in the UK as "The Year of the Child"
"Islands of Canada" (1981) - with photographs by J.A. Kraulis
"The Tatooed Woman" (1985) - short stories, published postumously.
Marian was pssionate in the causes of national and international writers. She was a founding member and first Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada, and she campaigned for payment to authors in proportion to library circulation of their books. She served on the City of Toronto Book Award Committee in 1975-77, and won the award in 1981 for "Lunatic Villas". She also served on the Canadian Book and Periodical Development Council and was a Trusree of the Toronto Public Library Board in 1975-78. In 1982, Marian was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, and in 1984, she was Metro Toronto YWCA's Woman of Distinction in Arts and Letters.
After her death in 1985, from cancer, several books were published about Marian's literary career: "Dear Hugh, Dear Marian: the McLennan-Engel Correspondence" (1995); "Marian Engel's Notebook: 'Ah mon cahier, ecoute..' (1999); "Marian Engel: Life in Letters" (2004); "Marian and the Major: Engel's Elizabeth and the Golden City" (2010). The latter book, by C. Verduyn, incorporated an unfinished novel that Marian working on at the time of her death.The Writers' Development Trust of Canada established the $10,000 Marian Engel Award, to be presented annually to a mid-career woman writer. The Award was later combined with a similar Timothy Findley Award to form the Writers' Trust Notable Author Award.
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1933 - 1985 (51 years)