Margery Williams 
The Velveteen Rabbit (Or How Toys Become Real) – Unabridged [EPUB ebook] 

Margery Williams Bianco (1881-1942) was born in London to Robert and Florence Williams, who she later described as loving and nurturing parents, both of whom encouraged their children to become readers and lovers of literature. When Robert Williams died, Margery (then seven) and her remaining family moved to America, settling in a farming community in rural Pennsylvania. Roger’s death has often been cited as one of the reasons why Margery’s books take on such dark themes of sadness and death, but Margery herself maintained that children learned to become more compassionate and achieved a greater humanity after facing adversity. Margery’s love of reading naturally led to a desire to create her own stories and she began publishing books at the age of nineteen, beginning with The Late Returning (1902) and The Thing in the Woods, a horror novel, in 1914. Married to Francesco Bianco in 1904, the couple had two children, Cecco and Pamela, and after briefly living in Paris, moved to Turin, Italy, where they would spend the entirety of the First World War with Francesco joining the Italian Army. After the war, with Europe in disarray, they returned to America and moved to Greenwich Village, where she would remain for the rest of her life. Margery continued to write and, in 1922, finally gained worldwide notoriety when she published The Velveteen Rabbit which became an instant classic. The Biancos’ daughter Pamela was a famous child artist and later illustrated some of her mother’s books, including The Little Wooden Doll (1925) and The Skin Horse (1927). Though Margery continued to write – penning over 20 children’s books and novels in her career – The Velveteen Rabbit continues to be her best-known work. Margery Williams Bianco died after a brief illness in 1944 at the age of 63.