Grace Steele Woodward

Grace Steele was born on September 14, 1899, in Joplin, Missouri.^[1] Her family moved to Webb City, Missouri, where she graduated from Webb City High School in 1917.^[2][3]

Woodward attended the University of Missouri, the University of Oklahoma, and Teachers College at Columbia University in New York.^[2][4]

Steele wanted to be an actress and she worked as a professional storyteller.^[5]

She married Guy Hendon Woodward, an attorney, in 1920; she had children before she began her writing career with a course at the University of Tulsa.^[5][1] Her stories appeared in Parents, Forecast, and Holland's Magazine. Sometimes she wrote under the pseudonym Marian Doane to protect the privacy of her children.^[2]

Her first book, The Man Who Conquered Pain (1962) was about William T.G. Morton, the dentist who promoted the user of ether.^[2] Her second book, The Cherokees (1963) was a history of the Cherokee tribe and it received widespread acclaim.^[2][5] Her third book, published in 1969, was a biography of Pocahontas. It won first prize from the Oklahoma State Writers.^[1] Her fourth book, The Secrets of Sherwood Forest, was co-authored with her husband and published in 1973; it covered the drilling of oil in Sherwood Forest during World War II.^[2]

She lived in Tulsa.^[4]

Woodward was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 1968.^[4] She was a member of .^[1]

Grace Steele Woodward died on December 18, 1987.^[2] Her husband, Guy Woodward, had died in 1979.^[5]

• The Man Who Conquered Pain: A Biography of William Thomas Green Morton. Beacon Press, 1962.
• The Cherokees. University of Oklahoma Press, 1963.^[6]
• Pocahontas. University of Oklahoma Press, 1969.
• The Secrets of Sherwood Forest: Oil Production in England During World War II. With Guy H. Woodward. University of Oklahoma Press, 1973.^[7]

• Grace Steele Woodward on Goodreads