Editing John Updike (section)

==Personal life and death==
Biographer [[Adam Begley]] wrote that Updike "transmuted the minutiae of his life" in prose, which enriched his readers at the cost of being "willing to sacrifice the happiness of people around him for his art".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2014-08-09 |title=The final sin of John Updike |url=https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/13174118.final-sin-john-updike/ |access-date=2023-07-08 |website=HeraldScotland |language=en}}</ref>

In 1953, while a student at Harvard, Updike married [[Mary Entwistle Pennington]], an art student at [[Radcliffe College]] and daughter of a prominent Unitarian minister.<ref name=":0">{{Cite magazine |last=Menand |first=Louis |date=2014-04-21 |title=Imitation of Life |language=en-US |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/04/28/imitation-of-life |access-date=2023-07-07 |issn=0028-792X}}</ref> She accompanied him to [[Oxford, England|Oxford]], England, where she attended art school and their first child, [[Elizabeth Updike Cobblah|Elizabeth]], was born in 1955. The couple had three more children together: [[David Updike|David]] (born 1957), Michael (born 1959), and Miranda (born 1960).

Updike was a lifelong [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat]]. He endorsed [[Barack Obama]] in 2008.<ref name="Guardian obituary">{{Cite news |last=Homberger |first=Eric |date=2009-01-27 |title=Obituary: John Updike, 1932-2009 |language=en-UK |work=The Guardian
|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/jan/27/john-updike-obituary}}</ref>

Updike was serially unfaithful, and eventually left the marriage in 1974 for [[Martha Ruggles Bernhard]].<ref name=":0" /> In 1977, Updike and Bernhard married. In 1982, his first wife married an [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] academic. Updike and Bernhard lived for more than 30 years in [[Beverly Farms]], Massachusetts. Updike had three stepsons through Bernhard.<ref name="Lehmann-Haupt">{{Cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |date=2009-01-28 |title=John Updike, a Lyrical Writer of the Middle-Class Man, Dies at 76 |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28updike.html |access-date=2023-12-23 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref> He died of lung cancer at a hospice in [[Danvers, Massachusetts]], on January 27, 2009, at age 76.<ref name="SSDI">Ancestry.com. Social Security Death Index [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2010. Original data: Social Security Administration. Social Security Death Index. Social Security Administration.</ref><ref name="death">{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7854554.stm|title=US novelist Updike dies of cancer|work=BBC News|date=January 27, 2009|access-date=January 28, 2009}}</ref> He was survived by his wife, his four children, three stepsons, his first wife, and seven grandchildren and seven step-grandchildren.<ref name="Lehmann-Haupt"/>