Mavis Gallant

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Canadian-born Mavis Gallant lived most of her life in Paris, where she wrote hundreds of short stories, two novels, essays, diaries, and a play during the mid to late twentieth century. Her work, which often deals with exile and transience, is known mostly through her lengthy publishing relationship with The New Yorker.
Colour portrait photo of Mavis Gallant in Paris, July 1984. She is smiling and looking directly at the camera. She wears a navy blazer with a brown stone brooch at the side and a small microphone at her collar.

Milestones

11 August 1922

Mavis de Trafford Young (later Gallant), an only child, was born in Montreal.
Schaub, Danielle. Mavis Gallant. Twayne Publishers.
xiii
The family lived across from McGill University on Sherbrooke Street and her very young parents had no deep interest in her.
Schaub, Danielle. Mavis Gallant. Twayne Publishers.
2
Gallant, Mavis, and Mavis Gallant. “An Introduction”. Home Truths, Macmillan of Canada, p. xi - xxii.
xv
Besner, Neil K. The Light of Imagination: Mavis Gallant’s Fiction. University of British Columbia Press.
2

June 1944

According to MG , her first newspaper feature, Meet Johnny, about a child named Johnny whom she saw living on the streets the summer she was hired on the Montreal Standard, appeared in print.
Neil K. Besner claims, however, that she started working at the Standard in September, not June.
Gallant, Mavis. “‘The Life of the Writer’”. Margaret Laurence Lecture, Writers’ Trust of Canada.
Besner, Neil K. The Light of Imagination: Mavis Gallant’s Fiction. University of British Columbia Press.
4

13 February 1995

MG published the last of her stories in The New Yorker: Scarves, Beads, Sandals. A reviewer found her latest stories remarkable in successfully making the leap to a modern world of generations after her birth.
“Contributors, Mavis Gallant”. The New Yorker.
Fleming, Bruce. “Mavis Gallant’s Flotsam”. The Washington Free Beacon.

18 February 2014

MG died in Paris at the age of ninety-one.
Verongos, Helen T. “Mavis Gallant, 91, Dies; Her Stories Told of Uprooted Lives and Loss”. The New York Times: Books.

Biography

Birth, Family, and Schooling

11 August 1922

Mavis de Trafford Young (later Gallant), an only child, was born in Montreal.
Schaub, Danielle. Mavis Gallant. Twayne Publishers.
xiii
The family lived across from McGill University on Sherbrooke Street and her very young parents had no deep interest in her.
Schaub, Danielle. Mavis Gallant. Twayne Publishers.
2
Gallant, Mavis, and Mavis Gallant. “An Introduction”. Home Truths, Macmillan of Canada, p. xi - xxii.
xv
Besner, Neil K. The Light of Imagination: Mavis Gallant’s Fiction. University of British Columbia Press.
2

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