Armine von Tempski

Armine von Tempski (or Tempsky) (1892, Maui, Hawaiian Islands – December 2, 1943, Fresno, California) was an American writer and one of Hawaii's best known authors. She was a granddaughter of Gustavus von Tempsky.

Armine Von Tempski's autobiographies and novels were based on her early life among the Hawaiian cowboys (paniolos) on the Haleakala cattle ranch atop the Haleakalā shield volcano. The Haleakala Ranch, which Jack London first visited in 1907, was his favourite of the Hawaiian ranches he enjoyed on several extended visits with his wife Charmian. The young Armine, then sixteen years old, asked London to read some of her stories and give his opinion. He said that they were “clumsy, incoherent tripe” but added that “every so often there’s a streak of fire on your pages,” which encouraged her. Her first published writing, in the early 1920s, was about efforts to restore the island of Kahoolawe after years of drought and overgrazing.

She married California real estate agent Alfred Lathrop Ball on December 25, 1932 in Ventura County, California. They were friends of poet Don Blanding, who illustrated von Tempski's book, Ripe Breadfruit (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1935).

Note: While Von Tempski's year of birth is sometimes given or presumed as 1899, it is given as 1892 in most source texts.

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