Lloyd Chudley Alexander

Lloyd Chudley Alexander
Lloyd Chudley Alexander
Personal details
Birth name	Lloyd Chudley Alexander
Born	30 January 1924; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Died	17 May 2007; Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
Nativity	United States
Religion	Protestant
Known for	Novelist
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch	United States Army
ASN	33581483
Rank	Private First Class
Camp Ritchie	Class 18 (13 April – 10 June 1944)
Section	7A
Enlisted	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Team	MII 496-G

Lloyd Chudley Alexander (30 January 1924 – 17 May 2007) was an American author and Ritchie Boy who trained at Camp Ritchie with Class 18, served as a translator and interpreter in France, and became one of the best-known writers of fantasy for young readers, winning the 1969 Newbery Medal for The High King, the last of the Chronicles of Prydain.

Biography edit

Lloyd Chudley Alexander was born in Philadelphia on 30 January 1924 to Alan Audley Alexander, a stockbroker, and Edna (née Chudley), and grew up with his elder sister, Florence, in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, just west of the city. His parents read little beyond newspapers and bought secondhand books mainly to fill their shelves, but he taught himself to read at about four and skipped the first two grades at a private Quaker school. After his father was ruined in the Wall Street Crash of 1929 he went to public school, where he skipped another grade and entered seventh grade at nine; he read Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and mythology, especially the legends of King Arthur, and wrote poetry. He left West Chester State Teachers College after one term, finding it unchallenging, and worked for six months in the mailroom of the Atlantic Refining Company before deciding that adventure would be a better school for a writer.

Alexander entered the Army as a private at Philadelphia on 2 February 1943 (ASN 33581483). Judged too clumsy for artillery and too prone to faint at the sight of blood to serve as a medic, he briefly played cymbals in an Army band in Texas and then served as a chaplain's assistant before the Army sent him to Lafayette College to study French language, politics, customs, and geography. He then trained at Camp Ritchie, graduating as a private first class with Class 18 (section 7A, certificate 6816), and was associated with MII Team 496-G; among his fellow trainees were veterans, scholars, refugees, and Cherokee soldiers. Serving in combat intelligence and counterintelligence, he rose to staff sergeant. After a brief stay in Wales, whose castles and landscapes later shaped his fiction, and in England, he spent six months translating radio messages with the Seventh Army in eastern France and then worked as a translator and interpreter in the Paris office of the Counter Intelligence Corps until the end of 1945.

After the war Alexander studied French literature at the University of Paris. He admired the poetry of Paul Éluard, who, after seeing Alexander's translations, named him his sole English translator, and he also sought advice from Gertrude Stein, who warned him how hard a writer's life could be. In Paris he met Janine Denni, who had a young daughter, Madeleine; they married on 8 January 1946 and settled in Philadelphia, first in the attic of his parents' house, where he spent twelve-hour days translating Éluard and writing. For about fifteen years he wrote mainly fiction, nonfiction, and translations for adults while working as a potter's apprentice for his sister, an advertising copywriter (from late 1948; his earnings and translation royalties let him buy a house in Kellytown, but he lost the job after three months), a copyeditor, and a cartoonist; his wife worked in a textile mill while publishers rejected his novels for seven years. His short story "The Fantastic Symphony" (1949), inspired by Berlioz, appeared in the New Directions annual. His breakthrough came with the autobiographical novel And Let the Credit Go (1955), about his years as a teenage bank messenger, followed by My Five Tigers (1956), about his cats, Janine Is French (1959), My Love Affair with Music (1960), Park Avenue Vet (1960) with the cat veterinarian Louis Camuti, and Fifty Years in the Doghouse (1964, reissued as Send for Ryan), a history of an ASPCA special agent commissioned by the society. For the Jewish Publication Society he wrote children's biographies of August Bondi, which won the 1959 National Jewish Book Award, and Aaron Lopez.

Time Cat (1963), his first fantasy, about a cat that visits its other lives in different eras, was, he later said, the most creative and liberating experience of his life. Nearing forty, he turned to children's fantasy for good, and his Welsh-inspired Chronicles of Prydain culminated in The High King, which won the 1969 Newbery Medal. He won the National Book Award for Children's Books in 1971 for The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian and in 1982 for Westmark. The Wizard in the Tree (1975), written during a period of depression, was followed by the better-received The Town Cats (1977) and The First Two Lives of Lukas-Kasha (1978), set in a fantasy version of fifteenth-century Persia, which won the Silver Slate Pencil Award in the Netherlands and the Austrian Book Award. His later series were Westmark (1981–1984), about a printer's apprentice caught up in revolution in an imaginary European kingdom around 1800, and Vesper Holly (1987–1990 and 2005), about a brilliant young Philadelphia heiress adventuring in the 1870s. His picture book The Fortune-Tellers (1992), illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, drew some criticism for placing a European-rooted tale in an African setting. In all he wrote 48 books, translated into 20 languages; he was twice nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and received three lifetime achievement awards.

Alexander helped create the children's magazine Cricket and served on its editorial board, joined the library committee of World Book Encyclopedia in 1974, and served on the board of the Friends of the International Board on Books for Young People from 1982. He kept a strict routine, rising at 4 a.m. and writing until late afternoon whether or not he felt inspired, and he corresponded with readers, some of whom visited him at home. He died of cancer at Drexel Hill on 17 May 2007, a few weeks after the death of Janine, his wife of sixty-one years; his last novel, The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, appeared that August. Brigham Young University's Harold B. Lee Library maintains a permanent exhibit of his desk, typewriter, manuscripts, and editions.

Gallery edit

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Timeline edit

30 January 1924 — Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1943–1944 — Graduated (as Pfc) with Class 18, section 7A. Certificate # 6816.
2 February 1943 — Entered the Army as Pvt at Philadelphia (ASN 33581483).
1945 — Translator and interpreter, Counter Intelligence Corps, Paris.
8 January 1946 — Married Janine Denni in Paris.
1955 — Published And Let the Credit Go.
1969 — Newbery Medal for The High King.
1971 — National Book Award for The Marvelous Misadventures of Sebastian.
1982 — National Book Award for Westmark.
17 May 2007 — Died in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.

Technical record edit

Field	Imported value
Approx Age at Death	83
Nara ASN	33581483
Nara Name	ALEXANDER LLOYD C
Nara State	2
Nara County	45
Nara POE	3295
Nara DOE	20243
Nara Grade Alpha	PVT
Nara Grade Code	8
Nara Branch Alpha	BI
Nara Branch Code	0
Branch	Branch Immaterial - Warrant Officers, USA
Nara Term or Enlistment	5
Term of enlistment	Enlistment for the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law
Defer. Date	0
Nara Source	0
Nara Nativity	32
Nativity.1	PENNSYLVANIA
Nara Year of Birth	24
Nara Race	1
Nara Race Description	White citizen
Nara Education	5
Nara Civilian Occupation	123
Nara Marital Status	6
Nara Height (inches)	68
Nara Weight (lbs)	117
Class_ASN	33581483
Class_Name	ALEXANDER, Lloyd C.
match_method	asn_exact_name_exact
row_source	both
Census_HISTID	544A2B08-0B09-4D76-A1DC-5CBC9F577290
Census_State	PENNSYLVANIA
Census_Relate	Child
Census_Sex	Male
Census_Age	16
Census_BirthYear	1924
Census_Marital	Never married/single
Census_Race	White
Census_BPL	PENNSYLVANIA
Census_MBPL	0
Census_FBPL	0
Census_Educ	Grade 11
Census_OCC	995

Research notes edit

DEML

Sources edit

Wikipedia: Lloyd Alexander
Camp Ritchie Museum, Inc. (The Ritchie History Museum), Classes 1–31 roster data
Dan Gross research spreadsheets, including original Excel timeline/roster work, combined with other research and records
NARA World War II Army enlistment records (where a NARA ASN is present)
1940 U.S. Census (where a census match is present)