McGinley, Phyllis (1905-1978), was a leading American author of light verse. Her collection Times Three: Selected Verse from Three Decades won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
McGinley praised the virtues of the ordinary life with affection and humor, and she celebrated but also satirized life’s absurdities. She defended femininity, morality, and domestic and suburban living in Times Three and in two books of witty essays, The Province of the Heart (1959) and Sixpence in Her Shoe (1964). McGinley summed up her point of view by quoting a man who said he had failed as a philosopher because “cheerfulness was always breaking in.” She wrote many books for young people, including The Horse Who Lived Upstairs (1944) and Sugar and Spice (1960).
McGinley was born on March 21, 1905, in Ontario, Oregon. She lived in a suburb of New York City, which provided the setting for much of her writing. She died on Feb. 22, 1978.
