Nora Benjamin Kubie (January 4, 1899 - September 8, 1988) was an American writer, artist and amateur archaeologist.
Biography
Born Eleanor Gottheil, she was the daughter of Muriel H. and Paul Gotteil, an executive with the
Cunard Line in New York. She graduated from the
Calhoun School
The Calhoun School is a progressive, co-educational, independent school on New York City's Upper West Side, serving students from Pre-K through 12th grade. Founded in 1896, the school currently has approximately 600 students, housed in two sep ...
in New York, delivering the valedictory speech in 1916. Gottheil appears on the
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...
alumnae list. and was reported by the New York Times as having graduating in 1920 from
Barnard College
Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...
.
[''New York Times']
Obituary
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Gottheil was married to John J. Benjamin from 1922 until his death in 1936 and she had one son by him. From 1938 to 1949 she was married to the psychoanalyst Lawrence Kubie Lawrence Schlesinger Kubie (17 March 1896– 27 October 1973) was an American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who practiced in New York City from 1930 to 1959. Kubie had several celebrity patients, including Tennessee Williams, Leonard Bernstein, Mos ...
.
She began her literary career writing nautical stories and juvenile novels, later focusing on Jewish historical fiction and archaeology. She wrote, she said, about things, places, events, and phenomena she knew about personally. Her books about Israel for example, were written after she moved there in the early 1950s, where she lived in Ein Hod
Ein Hod ( he, עֵין הוֹד) is a village in Haifa District in northern Israel. Located at the foot of Mount Carmel and southeast of Haifa, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hof HaCarmel Regional Council and has the status of community set ...
, a writers' colony. She traveled throughout the Middle East as an amateur archaeologist and produced an account of the early English explorer, Sir Austen Henry Layard.
As an artist, she illustrated many of her juvenile books. She lived in Westport, Connecticut
Westport is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, along the Long Island Sound within Connecticut's Gold Coast. It is northeast of New York City. The town had a population of 27,141 according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
History
...
in her later years and was a member of the MacDowell Colony
MacDowell is an artist's residency program in Peterborough, New Hampshire, United States, founded in 1907 by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, pianist and philanthropist Marian MacDowell. Prior to July 2020, it was known as the MacDowel ...
in Peterborough, New Hampshire
Peterborough is a town in Hillsborough County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 6,418 at the 2020 census. The main village, with 3,090 people at the 2020 census, is defined as the Peterborough census-designated place (CDP) and ...
. She died of acute leukemia at the age of 89.[
The novelist ]Lincoln Child
Lincoln Child (13 October 1957) is an American author of techno-thriller and horror novels. Though he is most well known for his collaborations with Douglas Preston (including the Agent Pendergast series and the Gideon Crew series, among other ...
is a grandson. In his fantasy novel '' Thunderhead'' (1998), he modeled the character of Nora Kelly on Nora Kubie.Interview with Lincoln Child
/ref>
Publications
*''Roving All the Day''
*''Hard Alee'' (1936)
*''Fathom Five'' (1939) A history of Bermuda
*''Make Way for a Sailor!'' (1946)
*''Remember the Valley'' (1951) a novel of young love featuring a female protagonist.
*''Joel'' (1952) a novel centered on a Jewish protagonist during the American Revolution.
*''The First Book of Israel'' (1953)
*''King Solomon’s Navy'' (1954)
*''King Solomon’s Horses'' (1956)
*''The First Book of Archaeology'' (1957) a history of the development of archaeology.
*''Road to Ninevah: The Adventures and Excavations of Sir Austen Henry Layard'' (1964; 1965 in the UK)
*''The Jews of Israel'' (1975)
*''Israel'' (1968, 1978) A general introduction.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kubie, Nora Benjamin
1899 births
1988 deaths
Amateur archaeologists
20th-century American women writers
American women illustrators
American illustrators
Barnard College alumni
Vassar College alumni
Artists from Westport, Connecticut
Writers from Westport, Connecticut