Nora Waln Literary Papers

Nora Waln was a 20th century Quaker author and journalist who wrote about Nazi Germany and China.

Born in Grampion, Pennsylvania, in 1895, she was the daughter of Thomas Lincoln and Lillian Quest Waln. She entered Swarthmore College with the Class of 1919 but left during her second year when war broke out. In 1920 she sailed for China to live with the Lins, a family with Waln connections in Hopei Province. She met her future husband, English foreign service officer George Edward Osland-Hill in the Far East. They were married in 1922 in the Cathedral of the Church of England in Shanghai. Nora and Ted had one child, Marie. Eventually she had to leave China, and in June of 1934 went to Germany with her husband who had retired and wanted to study music.

Nora Waln’s best known books include House of Exile and Reaching for the Stars. The former was drawn from her life in Germany, and latter the account of her stay in a Chinese household. She contributed articles to the Saturday Evening Post, the Atlantic Monthly, and other magazines. She was also the European administrator of the Kappa Kappa Gamma Fund for War Mothers and Children. Nora travelled widely, maintained residences in England and Philadelphia, and spent the final years of her life at Rincon de la Victoria, near Malaga in southern Spain.