Agnes Sligh Turnbull was a bestselling American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, most noted for her works of historical fiction based in her native Western Pennsylvania

Western Pennsylvania

Western Pennsylvania consists of the western third of the state of Pennsylvania in the United States. Pittsburgh is the largest city in the region, with a metropolitan area population of about 2.4 million people, and serves as its economic and cultural center. Erie, Altoona, and Johnstown are its...

.

Biography

Her parents were Alexander Halliday Sligh, an immigrant from Scotland, and Lucinda Hannah McConnell, also of Scottish descent. She attended the village school, and went on to boarding school before enrolling at the Teachers College at what is now called Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Indiana University of Pennsylvania is a public university in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, USA. The university is northeast of Pittsburgh. It is the largest university in the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and is the commonwealth's fifth largest university...

, from which she graduated Phi Beta Kappa. She also attended the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

 before starting her career as a high school English teacher.

In 1918, she married James Lyall Turnbull, just before his departure for Europe during World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

. He returned, and they were married for 40 years and had one child, a daughter named Martha. The family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey

Maplewood, New Jersey

Maplewood is a township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 23,867.-History:...

 in 1922, where she lived for the rest of her life.

Turnbull had her first short story published by The American Magazine in 1920, and published further short stories regularly until 1936, when she published her first novel, The Rolling Years

The Rolling Years

The Rolling Years is the first novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull and it is set in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, just east of Pittsburgh....

. While some critics regarded the morality of her writing as old-fashioned, she and others attributed it to a hopeful outlook on life.

She is buried in New Alexandria, Pennsylvania.
Quote:"Dogs Lives are too short..Their only fault, really."

Novels

• The Rolling Years
  The Rolling Years
  The Rolling Years is the first novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull and it is set in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, just east of Pittsburgh....
  
  . New York: Macmillan, 1936.
• Remember the End
  Remember the End
  Remember the End is the second novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull and it is set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from the 1890s to World War I....
  
  . New York: Macmillan, 1938.
• The Day Must Dawn
  The Day Must Dawn
  Remember the End is an historical novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull set in 1777 in Hanna's Town, Pennsylvania, a frontier settlement thirty miles east of Pittsburgh....
  
  . New York: Macmillan, 1942.
• The Bishop's Mantle
  The Bishop's Mantle
  The Bishop's Mantle is a novel by Agnes Sligh Turnbull about the grandson of an American Episcopal bishop in New York City in the early years of World War II.-Plot introduction:...
  
  . New York: Macmillan, 1947.
• The Gown of Glory
  The Gown of Glory
  The Gown of Glory is a novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull set in a fictional rural village of Ladykirk, which is much like the author's birthplace of New Alexandria, Pennsylvania, about thirty miles east of Pittsburgh....
  
  . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952.
• The Golden Journey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955.
• The Nightingale (novel)
  The Nightingale (novel)
  The Nightingale is a novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull set in a fictional rural Western Pennsylvania village at the turn of the 20th century.Violet Carpenter is already considered a spinster at age twenty-five when financial necessity forces her...
  
  . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960.
• The King's Orchard
  The King's Orchard
  The King's Orchard is an historical novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull based upon the life of James O'Hara , an American industrialist....
  
  . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963
• The Wedding Bargain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966
• The Flowering. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972.
• The Richlands
  The Richlands
  The Richlands is an historical novel by the American writer Agnes Sligh Turnbull set in a rural village in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, thirty miles east of Pittsburgh....
  
  . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
• The Two Bishops. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.

Juvenile works

• Elijah the Fish-bite. New York: Macmillan, 1940.
• Jed, the Shepherd’s Dog. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957.
• George. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1964.
• The White Lark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1968.

Memoir

• Dear Me: Leaves from the Diary of Agnes Sligh Turnbull. New York: Macmillan, 1941.

Sources

• Alan Jalowitz's biographical sketch of Agnes Turnbull at Pennsylvania Center of the Book