The Stone Angel is possibly the best-known of Margaret Laurence's series of novels set in the fictitious town of Manawaka, Manitoba. First published in 1964 by McClelland and Stewart, The Stone Angel tells the story of Hagar Currie Shipley, using parallel narratives set in the past and the present-day 1960s. In the present-day narrative, 90-year-old Hagar is struggling against being put in a nursing home, which she sees as a symbol of death. The present-day narrative alternates with Hagar looking back at her life.

Although Margaret Laurence had been publishing fiction for a decade before The Stone Angel was published in 1964, it was this novel that first won her a wide and appreciative audience. When The Stone Angel was first published in 1964, most reviewers recognized it as a major achievement. Robertson Davies, in The New York Times Book Review, praised Laurence's insight into character as well as her "freshness of approach her gift for significant detail.” A reviewer for Time described The Stone Angel as "one of the most convincing and the most touching portraits of an unregenerate sinner declining into senility since Sara Monday went to her reward in Joyce Cary's The Horse's Mouth."

The book, amongst other titles by Laurence, was banned by some school boards and high schools, usually following complaints from fundamentalist Christian groups labelling the book blasphemous and obscene. The Stone Angel has been translated into French, as L'Ange de pierre (Montréal, 1976), German, and eleven other languages. It was also selected for the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by Leon Rooke.



Margaret Laurence was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, in 1926. Upon graduation from Winnipeg’s United College in 1947, she took a job as a reporter for the Winnipeg Citizen. From 1950 until 1957 Laurence lived in Africa, the first two years in Somalia and the next five in Ghana where her husband, a civil engineer, was working. She translated Somali poetry and prose during this time and began her career as a fiction writer with stories set in Africa.

When Laurence returned to Canada in 1957, she settled in Vancouver, where she devoted herself to fiction with a Ghanaian setting and produced her first novel, This Side Jordan, and her first collection of short fiction, The Tomorrow-Tamer. She also wrote a memoir, The Prophet’s Camel Bell, about her two years spend in Somalia.

Separating from her husband in 1962, Laurence moved to England, which became her home for a decade. In that time Laurence wrote five books about the fictional town of Manawaka, patterned after her birthplace, and its people - The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire-Dwellers, A Bird in the House, and The Diviners.

Laurence settled in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1974. She complemented her fiction with essays, book reviews, and four children’s books. Her many honours include two Governor General’s Awards for Fiction and more than a dozen honorary degrees. Margaret Laurence died in Lakefield, Ontario, in 1987.