Maginel Wright Enright

Wright Enright was born Margaret Ellen Wright in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the third child of William and Anna Wright. The name "Maginel" was a later creation of her mother's, a contraction of "Maggie Nell". At age two the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin. Ten years later they moved to Chicago, to be closer to Frank's architectural work, where she eventually attended the Chicago Art Institute. Her first job as a commercial artist was with the Barnes, Crosby Co. of Chicago, where her main task was catalog illustration. There she met Walter J. "Pat" Enright, another young artist, whom she married. Wright Enright gave birth to their daughter Elizabeth on September 17, 1907, in Oak Park, Illinois. The Enrights moved to New York City for their careers and enjoyed an active social life there. After their divorce, Wright Enright married Hiram Barney, a lawyer who died in 1925. Wright Enright's autobiography, The Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses, was published in 1965, one year before her death in East Hampton, New York.

In addition to book illustration, Wright Enright was a magazine illustrator and cover artist, working mostly for women's magazines like McClure's and the Ladies' Home Journal. She also designed Christmas cards and did various and miscellaneous sorts of artwork. In the memoir Tales of Taliesin, Cornelia Brierly recalls Maginel, "full of fun and very sophisticated", spending summers with her daughter Elizabeth ("Bitsy") at her brother's establishment Taliesin, designing and making "yarn paintings" that she later sold in New York. In the 1940s, she distinguished herself as a shoe designer, creating high-fashion jeweled and sequined shoes, which were manufactured by Capezio.