| Main entry | Ostenso, Martha |
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| Birth place | A farm outside of Haukeland (now part of Bergen), Hordaland, Norway |
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| Birth date | 17 September 1900 |
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| Death place | Seattle, Washington, USA |
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| Death date | 24 November 1963 |
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| Identifier | 0360 |
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| Birth name | Martha Ostenso |
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| Married name | Durkin |
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| Marital status | married |
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| Religious affiliation | Lutheran |
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| Paid work | teacher (school); reporter; social worker |
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| Biography | Born in Norway in 1900, Martha Ostenso (1900-1963) immigrated to Winnipeg with her parents at the age of two. After several years of migratory living in the Dakotas and Minnesota while father Sigurd tried to secure a career, the family finally returned to Manitoba in 1915. Already a regular contributor to the Minneapolis JOURNAL at the age of eleven, she attended the Brandon Collegiate (1915-17) and Kelvin Technical High School in Winnipeg, and, after a brief teaching contract at Hayland, began taking courses at the University of Manitoba. During the time it took to complete her studies, Martha worked as a reporter for the MANITOBA FREE PRESS and began what would evolve into a life-long working and personal relationship with one of her married professors, Douglas Durkin (1884-1967). In the winter of 1920, Martha followed Douglas to New York, where he had moved to teach at Columbia University, and enrolled in his creative writing class. Outside of school, she continued to work as a reporter and also took up employment as a social worker. By the mid-1920s, Martha and Douglas had officially entered into the unique writing relationship that they would only officially recognize in 1958, through signing an agreement stating that any "Martha Ostenso" novel had in fact been a collaborative effort. In addition to leading a lavish, childless life with Douglas, full of social engagements with some of Hollywood's elite, Martha enjoyed a successful writing career during her adult years: WILD GEESE (1925) won the $13,500 prize from Curtis Brown for best first novel. Released in England as PASSIONATE FLIGHT, the novel was serialized in the PICTORIAL REVIEW and made into a movie by Famous Players. While all her works were popular when they appeared, none would surpass the success of WILD GEESE. After intermittent residencies with Douglas during this period, from the couple's cabin on Gull Lake in Minnesota to their house in Beverley Hills, Martha finally became Mrs. Durkin in 1944, following the death of Douglas's wife, Estelle. As her health declined, along with the popularity of her books, Martha decided in 1963 to retire to Seattle with Douglas but she collapsed en route and died of liver failure. |
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| Travel | Norway, 1925 |
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| Other notes | Martha's success in the Curtis Brown competition may explain why the couple first decided to keep quiet about the Ostenso/Durkin writing partnership: Douglas, as a seasoned writer, would not have been eligible to win a prize intended for a first-time novelist.
Amongst Martha's circle of friends was fellow writer, Canadian-born actress Mary Pickford.* |
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| Honours and awards | Award for WILD GEESE, Best first novel ($13,500) (Curtis Brown literary agency, 1925) |
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| Residences | Haukeland, Norway (1900-c1902); Winnipeg, Manitoba (c1902-); Deuel, South Dakota (1902-1914); Benson, Minnesota; Brandon, Manitoba (1915-1917); Winnipeg (1917-1918); Hayland, Manitoba (1918-1919); Winnipeg (1919); New York (December 1920-1923); Winnipeg (1923); New York (1924-1925); Indianapolis, Indiana (1926); near Closter, New Jersey, and Beverly Hills, California (1926-1930); Hollywood, and Minnesota (1930s), including cabin at Gull Lake (1931); St. Louis, Minnesota (1942); Minneapolis (1951-1963); Seattle, Washington (-1963) |
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| Geographic regions | Manitoba; USA |
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| Primary genres | fiction; poetry; non-fiction |
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| Books | A FAR LAND (1924); WILD GEESE (1925); THE DARK DAWN (1926); THE MAD CAREWS (1927); THE YOUNG MAY MOON (1929); THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH (1930); PROLOGUE TO LOVE (1932); THERE'S ALWAYS ANOTHER YEAR (1933); THE WHITE REEF (1934); THE STONE FIELD (1937); THE MANDRAKE ROOT (1938); LOVE PASSED THIS WAY (1942); O RIVER, REMEMBER! (1943); AND THEY SHALL WALK: THE LIFE STORY OF SISTER ELIZABETH KENNY (1943) by Ostenso and Kenny; MILK ROUTE (1948); THE SUNSET TREE (1949); A MAN HAD TALL SONS (1958) |
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| Periodicals | ARGOSY; AMERICAN SCANDINAVIAN REVIEW; BOSTON SUNDAY POST; CANADIAN HOME JOURNAL; CANADIAN MAGAZINE; CANADIAN NATION; CHATELAINE; COLLIERS; COSMOPOLITAN; COUNTRY GUIDE; DELINEATOR; GOOD HOUSEKEEPING; JOURNAL (Minneapolis); LIBERTY; LITERARY DIGEST; MACLEAN'S; MCCALL'S; NORTH AMERICAN REDBOOK; REVIEW; PICTORIAL REVIEW; POETRY; SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE; TODAY'S WOMAN |
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| Other publications | Anthologized in: Bennett, NEW HARVESTING (1938); Brooker, YEARBOOK OF THE ARTS IN CANADA, 1928-1929 (1929); Carman and Pierce, OUR CANADIAN LITERATURE (1934); Caswell, CANADIAN SINGERS AND THEIR SONGS (1925) |
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| Father's name | Sigurd Brigt Ostenso |
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| Life dates of father | c1873, Ostenso, Norway - 2 January 1932, Hennepin, Minnesota |
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| Father's note | stationary steam engineer; buttermaker at Dominion Produce Company; lived in Winnipeg prior to the arrival of wife and daughter |
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| Mother's name | Olina ("Lina") Tungeland |
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| Life dates of mother | 17 September 1873, Haukeland, Norway - 8 February 1968, Crow Wing, Minnesota |
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| Spouse 1 | Douglas Leader Durkin |
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| Life dates of spouse 1 | 9 July 1884, Amaranth Township, Dufferin, Ontario - 4 June 1967, Seattle, Washington |
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| Spouse 1 note | writer, author of THE MAGPIE (1923) and many other books; professor of English Literature at Brandon College and University of Manitoba; left first wife and children in 1920 to teach at Columbia University and to write; lived in Vancouver, and then intermittently in California with family, either until divorce or Estelle Durkin's death in 1943; used pseudonym "Conrad North" |
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| Marriage 1 date | 16 December 1944 |
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| Biographical references | Atherton, "Martha Ostenso (1900-63)," CANADIAN WRITERS AND THEIR WORKS, Vol. 4 (1991); Dictionary of Literary Biography 92; FEMINIST COMPANION TO LITERATURE IN ENGLISH (1990); Wishart, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE GREAT PLAINS, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Web, 2011); Coates, "Martha Ostenso," THE CANADIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, Historica-Dominion (Web, 2012); 1910 United States Federal Census; 1916 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta; Border Crossings: From Canada to U.S., 1895-1956; California Passenger and Crew Lists, 1882-1957; New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 |
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| Bibliographic references | Watters, CHECKLIST OF CANADIAN LITERATURE...1620-1960 (1970), pp. 154, 357, 557 |
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| Research references | complete |
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| Image credits | Image from Enid Griffis, "Her Friends Call Her 'Mar'," CANADIAN PASSING SHOW 34.1 (October 1928) 11. |
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| Copyright | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Please cite Canada's Early Women Writers. SFU Library Digital Collections. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada. 1980-2014. |
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