Women Writers in Movies
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- Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought home due to a local outbreak of disease. Two years later she attended the Abbey Boarding School in Reading, reportedly wanting to follow her sister Cassandra, until 1786.
Jane was mostly educated at home, where she learned how to play the piano, draw and write creatively. She read frequently and later came to enjoy social events such as parties, dances and balls. She disliked the busy life of towns and preferred the country life, where she took to taking long walks.
In 1801 Jane, her parents and sister moved to Bath, a year after her father's retirement, and the family frequented the coast. While on one of those coastal holidays she met a young man, but the resulting romantic involvement ended tragically when he died. It is believed by many astute Austen fans that her novel, "Persuasion", was inspired by this incident.
Following her father's passing in January of 1805--which left his widow and daughters with financial problems--the family moved several times until finally settling into a small house, in Chawton, Hampshire, owned by her brother Edward, which is reminiscent of "Sense and Sensibility". It was in this house that she wrote most of her works.
In March of 1817 her health began to decline and she was forced to abandon her work on "Sanditon", which she never completed. It turned out that she had Addisons disease. In April she wrote out her will and then on May 24th moved with Cassandra to Winchester, to be near her physician. It was in Winchester she died, in the arms of her sister, on Friday, 18 July 1817, at the age of only 41. She was buried the 24th of July at Winchester Cathedral. Jane never married.
During her formative years, Jane wrote plays and poems. At 14 she wrote her first novel, "Love and Freindship [sic]" and other juvenilia. Her first (unsuccessful) submission to a publisher, however, was in 1797 titled "First Impressions" (later "Pride and Prejudice"). In 1803 "Susan" (later "Northanger Abbey") was actually sold to a publisher for a mere £10 but was not published until 14 years later, posthumously. Her first accepted work was in 1811 titled "Sense and Sensibility", which was published anonymously as were all books published during her lifetime. She revised "First Impressions" and published it entitled "Pride and Prejudice" in 1813. "Mansfield Park" was published in 1814, followed by "Emma" in 1816, the same year she completed "Persuasion" and began "Sanditon", which was ultimately left unfinished. Both "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey" were published in 1818, after her death.Novelist "Pride and Prejudice" 2005, "Sense and Sensibility" 1995 - UK - Agatha was born as "Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller" in 1890 to Frederick Alvah Miller and Clara Boehmer. Agatha was of American and British descent, her father being American and her mother British. Her father was a relatively affluent stockbroker. Agatha received home education from early childhood to when she turned 12-years-old in 1902. Her parents taught her how to read, write, perform arithmetic, and play music. Her father died in 1901. Agatha was sent to a girl's school in Torquay, Devon, where she studied from 1902 to 1905. She continued her education in Paris, France from 1905 to 1910. She then returned to her surviving family in England.
As a young adult, Agatha aspired to be a writer and produced a number of unpublished short stories and novels. She submitted them to various publishers and literary magazines, but they were all rejected. Several of these unpublished works were later revised into more successful ones. While still in this point of her life, Agatha sought advise from professional writer Eden Phillpotts (1862-1960). Meanwhile she was searching for a suitable husband and in 1913 accepted a marriage proposal from military officer and pilot-in-training Archibald "Archie" Christie. They married in late 1914. Her married name became "Agatha Christie" and she used it for most of her literary works, including ones created decades following the end of her first marriage.
During World War I, Archie Christie was send to fight in the war and Agatha joined the Voluntary Aid Detachment, a British voluntary unit providing field nursing services. She performed unpaid work as a volunteer nurse from 1914 to 1916. Then she was promoted to "apothecaries' assistant" (dispenser), a position which earned her a small salary until the end of the war. She ended her service in September, 1918.
Agatha wrote "The Mysterious Affair at Styles", her debut novel ,in 1916, but was unable to find a publisher for it until 1920. The novel introduced her famous character Hercule Poirot and his supporting characters Inspector Japp and Arthur Hastings. The novel is set in World War I and is one of the few of her works which are connected to a specific time period.
Following the end of World War I and their retirement from military life, Agatha and Archie Christie moved to London and settled into civilian life. Their only child Rosalind Margaret Clarissa Christie (1919-2004) was born early in the marriage. Agatha's debut novel was first published in 1920 and turned out to be a hit. It was soon followed by the successful novels "The Secret Adversary" (1922) and "Murder on the Links" (1923) and various short stories. Agatha soon became a celebrated writer.
In 1926, Archie Christie announced to Agatha that he had a mistress and that he wanted a divorce. Agatha took it hard and mysteriously disappeared for a period of 10 days. After an extensive manhunt and much publicity, she was found living under a false name in Yorkshire. She had assumed the last name of Archie's mistress and claimed to have no memory of how she ended up there. The doctors who attended to her determined that she had amnesia. Despite various theories by multiple sources, these 10 days are the most mysterious chapter in Agatha's life.
Agatha and Archie divorced in 1928, though she kept the last name Christie. She gained sole custody of her daughter Rosalind. In 1930, Agatha married her second (and last) husband Max Mallowan, a professional archaeologist. They would remain married until her death in 1976.Christie often used places that she was familiar with as settings for her novels and short stories. Her various travels with Max introduced her to locations of the Middle East, and provided inspiration for a number of novels.
In 1934, Agatha and Max settled in Winterbrook, Oxfordshire, which served as their main residence until their respective deaths. During World War II, she served in the pharmacy at the University College Hospital, where she gained additional training about substances used for poisoning cases. She incorporated such knowledge for realistic details in her stories.
She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1956 and a Dame Commander of the same order in 1971. Her husband was knighted in 1968. They are among the relatively few couples where both members have been honored for their work. Agatha continued writing until 1974, though her health problems affected her writing style. Her memory was problematic for several years and she had trouble remembering the details of her own work, even while she was writing it. Recent researches on her medical condition suggest that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease or other dementia. She died of natural causes in early 1976.Death on the Nile 1978, Ten Little Indians 1965, Witness for the Procecusion 1957 #85, by Billy Wilder - UK - Writer
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Colette was born on 28 January 1873 in Saint-Sauveur-en-Puisaye, Yonne, France. She was a writer, known for Gigi (1958), Chéri (2009) and Matinee Theatre (1955). She was married to Maurice Goudeket, Henri de Jouvenel des Ursins and Willy. She died on 3 August 1954 in Paris, France.- Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later immortalize as the brutal Lowood school in "Jane Eyre". Conditions at the school were so bad that both Maria and Elizabeth became ill with consumption (tuberculosis) which killed them in 1825. Charlotte was very close to her surviving siblings, Anne Brontë, Branwell, and Emily Brontë. The children invented the imaginary kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, and spent much of their childhood writing poetry and stories about their make-believe realms. In 1846 the three sisters published a collected work of their poetry called, appropriately enough, "Poems", and in 1847 Charlotte published her most famous book, "Jane Eyre", under a male pseudonym, Currer Bell. Charlotte lost her remaining siblings within a brief time -- Branwell from alcoholism and Emily from consumption, both in 1848; Anne also from consumption in 1849. Charlotte was devastated, and became a lifelong hypochondriac. She resided in London, where she made the acquaintance and admiration of William Makepeace Thackeray. In 1854, she married Reverend A. B. Nicholls, curate of Haworth, against her father's wishes. Charlotte found she was pregnant not long after her marriage, and it was felt she would have a difficult pregnancy due to previous ill-health. She died on 31 March 1855."Jane Eyre" 2011, "The man I love" 1962 EG - UK
- The dreamiest of the talented Brontë clan, Emily Jane Brontë was born in 1818. Her mother died when she was barely more than a toddler, and Emily and her younger sister, Anne, became very close. Along with their other siblings, 'Charlotte Bronte' and Branwell Bronte, they invented the make-believe kingdoms of Angria and Gondal, which occupied their lonely childhoods.
Emily never socialized well, and had few friends outside her family. In 1846 she and her sisters published a compilation of their poetry, "Poems", which was followed a year later by Emily's only novel, "Wuthering Heights". An intense and powerful novel, whose enigmatic hero Heathcliff was modeled on Emily's brother, Branwell, "Wuthering Heights" was not an immediate success like Charlotte's "Jane Eyre", but was later recognized as one of the best books of English Literature. Like her sisters, Emily published her book under a male pseudonym, Eliss Bell. In 1848, while attending the funeral of her brother Branwell, Emily caught a cold that developed quickly into the tuberculosis that would take her own life later that year."Wuthering Heights" 1992 - UK - Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the female equivalent of a knighthood. Thus, she achieved a trifecta of sorts, as her father and her husband were both knights.
She was born on May 13, 1907 in London, the second daughter of the famous actor-manager Gerald du Maurier, who himself was knighted in 1922, and the actress Muriel Beaumont. Her grandfather was the famous anglo-French writer George L. Du Maurier, the creator of Svengali in his 1894 novel "Trilby". (She was also cousin to the Llewelyn Davies boys, through her grandfather Gerald. The boys were the inspiration for the boys in J.M. Barrie' Peter Pan (1924) and his Neverland works.) Her husband was also famous: Frederick A. M. Browning, the WWII Commander "Boy" Browning renowned as the "father of the British airborne forces." He helped plan and execute Operation Market Garden, an airborne operation that put Allied troops into Germany and the Netherlands, an ultimately unsuccessful venture chronicled in Cornelius Ryan's A Bridge Too Far (1977). During the Second World War, Boy Browning achieved the rank of Lieutenant General and a knighthood. Browning's quote that Arnheim was a bridge too far later became famous as a book title and ultimately a movie title. Daphne published her first short story in 1928; her first novel, "The Loving Spirit", was published in 1931, and her last, "Rule Britannia", forty-one year later. In between, she achieved her greatest success with the novel Rebecca (1940), which was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into a classic film that won the Best Picture Oscar for 1940. Another novel, Don't Look Now (1973), adapted by Nicolas Roeg, is also considered a classic film in Britain.
Along with "Rebecca", she had great successes with her novels Jamaica Inn (1939) and Frenchman's Creek (1944), both of which were adapted into movies. The three novels were set in Cornwall, where she lived. In addition to multiple non-fiction books, Daphne Du Maurier also wrote three plays (including an adaptation of "Rebecca").
She died on April 19, 1989, in Par in her beloved Cornwall, five weeks shy of her 82nd birthday."Rebecca" UK - Writer
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Margaret Mitchell was an American historical novelist and a journalist. She published only one completed novel in her lifetime, "Gone with the Wind" (1936), which covered a woman's struggle for survival through the American Civil War and the Reconstruction Era. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1937, and it was the top American fiction bestseller in 1936 and 1937. Mitchell had completed the romance novella "Lost Laysen" in her adolescence, but it was only published posthumously in 1996. A collection of Mitchell's newspaper articles was published under the title ""Margaret Mitchell: Reporter" (2000). Several of her writings from her early life have been published under the title "Before Scarlett: Girlhood Writings of Margaret Mitchell." (2000).
In 1900, Mitchell was born in Atlanta, Georgia. Her father was Eugene Mitchell (1866-1944), a prominent lawyer, politician, and historian. He served a term as the President of the Atlanta Board of Education (1911-1912), and co-founded the Atlanta Historical Society. Mitchell's mother was Maybelle Stephens Mitchell (1872-1919), a prominent suffragist leader, and a co-founder of both the League of Women Voters in Georgia and the Catholic Layman's Association of Georgia. Mitchell's paternal ancestors were Scottish-Americans, and her maternal ancestors were Irish-Americans.
During her early childhood, Mitchell lived with her family at a Jackson Street mansion, east of downtown Atlanta. The mansion was owned by Miitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Stephens (d. 1934) , who lived with them. Stephens was reportedly a tyrant to her family, and had a somewhat adversarial relationship with her granddaughter. But Mitchell went on to interview her for "eye-witness information" about the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction in Atlanta. Stephen's memories were one of the primary sources for "Gone with the Wind" .
Mitchell's mother had the habit of dressing her daughter in boys' pants, because she thought that they were safer than dresses. Mitchell continued dressing as a boy until she was 14, and her family nicknamed her "Jimmy" (after the comic strip character "Little Jimmy"). Mitchell was a tomboy in her childhood, and her favorite pastime was to ride her Texas plains pony. Aging Confederate soldiers tried to entertain the young girl by narrating to her gritty details of specific battles from the Civil War.
In 1912, the Mitchell family moved to a new residence at the east side of Peachtree Street. The house was located at a short distance from the Chattahoochee River. The family reportedly had concerns about the safety of their Jackson Hill home, due to its proximity to areas affected by the Atlanta Race Riot (1906). The Jackson Hill home was eventually destroyed in the Great Atlanta Fire of 1917.
By the early 1910s , Mitchell was an avid reader. Among her favorite writers were Edith Nesbit and Thomas Dixon. Mitchell started writing fairy tales and adventure stories as a hobby. Among her early works was "The Arrow Brave and the Deer Maiden" (1913), about a mixed-race "Indian" who has to endure pain to win over his love interest. Mitchell's mother kept her daughter's stories in white enamel bread boxes.
In 1914, Mitchell started attending Atlanta's Washington Seminary, a then-fashionable private girls' school. The school had over 300 students. Mitchell joined the school's drama club. She was still a tomboy, and she habitually played the male characters in performances of William Shakespeare's plays. She also joined the school's literary club, and had her stories published in the school's yearbook. Among her first published stories was the revenge-themed "Little Sister", where a little girl shoots her sister's rapist.
In 1918, Mitchell graduated and started preparing for a college education, at the insistence of her mother. Her mother chose which school Mitchell would attend, Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. At the time, it was reputedly "the best women's college in the United States". Before her college classes started, Mitchell was engaged to her first serious love interest, the army lieutenant Clifford West Henry. He was send to fight in France in July 1918, and was mortally wounded in October of the same year. Mitchell would continue mourning him for years.
In 1919, Mitchell' mother died from the flu. She was one of the many victims of a flu pandemic that had started in 1918. Mitchell arrived home from college, a day after her mother had died. She found that her mother left a short letter of advise for her, telling her to take care of herself before taking care of other causes.
Later in 1919, Mitchell dropped out of college. She did not excel in any area of academics, and her father expected her to take over the family's household. Mitchell had health problems of her own, and had an appendectomy in the autumn of 1919. Mitchell was feeling increasingly disappointed with her life's direction, as she wrote to a friend. In 1920, Mitchell made her Atlanta society debut. Shortly after, she started dressing as a flapper. In 1921, she shocked the Atlanta high society by performing an Apache dance in a charity ball, and kissing her male partner during the performance. She was consequently blacklisted from the Junior League.
In 1922, Mitchell started dating the bootlegger Berrien ("Red") Kinnard Upshaw (1901-1949). In September 1922. the couple were married against her family's wishes. They both moved in with Mitchell's father. Red was an alcoholic with a violent temper, and Mitchell suffered physical abuse at his hands. They agreed to a period of separation in December 1922, and their divorce was finalized in October 1924. In 1925, Mitchell married her second husband John Robert Marsh (1895-1952). He was Red's former roommate, and another love interest for Mitchell since 1922. Marsh had reportedly secured Mitchell's uncontested divorce, by giving Red a loan. Mitchell and her new husband set their residence at the Crescent Apartments in Atlanta, nicknaming their new home "The Dump". It would later become known as Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.
Between her two marriages, Mitchell had decided that she needed her own source of income. In 1922, she started working as a journalist for "The Atlanta Journal Sunday Magazine". Among her early successes was securing a 1923 interview with the then-popular actor Rudolph Valentino. She continued her journalistic career until May 1926. At the time of her resignation, Mitchell had suffered an ankle injury that would not heal properly. Her mobility problems prevented her from working on assignments.In her four years as a journalist, Mitchell wrote 129 feature articles, 85 news stories, and several book reviews.
Following her resignation from "The Atlanta Journal", Mitchell worked for a few months as a gossip columnist for the "Sunday Magazine". In 1926, Marsh asked his increasingly bored wife why she did not write a book of her own instead of reading thousands of them. By 1928, Mitchell started work on a historical novel of her own. In 1935, her novel was still unfinished. But the book editor Harold Latham of Macmillan read her manuscript and was convinced that it was a potential best-seller. Having secured a publisher, Mitchell spend 6 months in making revisions and checking the novel's historical references. "Gone with the Wind" was published in June 1936.
Her novel turned Mitchell into a literary celebrity, but she had no intention of writing further works. In September 1941, Mitchell christened the light cruiser USS Atlanta (CL-51). During World War II, Mitchell served as a volunteer for the American Red Cross. She raised money for the war effort by selling war bonds. In 1944, she christened the light cruiser USS Atlanta (CL-104).
On August 11, 1949, Mitchell crossed Peachtree Street with her husband. They were on their way to a movie theatre, when Mitchell was struck by a drunk driver. She was hospitalized at Grady Hospital. She died on August 16, without ever regaining consciousness. She was buried at Oakland Cemetery, Georgia. Her husband was buried by her side in 1952. Though Mitchell is long gone, her novel never went out of print. It remains popular into the 21st century. Mitchell was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000."Gone with the Wind" - US- Writer
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Daughter of Christian missionaries, Pearl Buck was reared and educated in China. She received her university education in America but returned to China in the mid-1910s. She became a university instructor and writer, eventually authoring novels about China, some of which were turned into Hollywood films, including The Good Earth (1937) and Dragon Seed (1944). She also wrote novels using the pen-name 'John Sedges', and she won the 'Nobel Prize' for Literature in 1938.The Good Earth 1937 US (1938, Nobel Prize in Literature)- Writer
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After graduating from high school, Sagan studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. While she was still studying, she wrote her first novel at the age of 17: "Bonjour Tristesse" was published in 1954 and caused a scandal with its explicit depictions of sex, which soon made her known worldwide as a writer. The writer published under the pseudonym Sagan, which referred to a character in Marcel Proust's novel. She received the Prix de la Critique for her debut novel, which became a bestseller with translations into 22 languages. As a result, Sagan became France's most successful bestselling author, writing more than 40 novels and plays. Her best-known titles include novels such as "Aimez-vous Brahms" (1959), "Les Merveilleux Nuages" (1961), "Un orage immobile" (1983) and "Le Mirroir égaré" (1996).
Some of Sagan's novels have also been made into films. She herself wrote the script for Claude Chabrol's film "Landu" (1963). After her first marriage to the publisher Guy Schöller, Sagan was married to the sculptor Robert Westhoff, with whom she had a son and from whom she also divorced. Due to her excessive lifestyle, Sagan was considered a colorful figure of celebrities and upper society. Gambling, alcohol and drug addictions as well as sometimes serious traffic accidents repeatedly brought them into the headlines of the tabloid press. Sagan also got into trouble with the judiciary because of tax evasion. Since her author's income was seized by the tax authorities, the writer found herself on the verge of financial ruin towards the end of her life.
Françoise Sagan died on September 24, 2004 of a pulmonary embolism in Honfleur, Calvados department."Bonjour Tristesse", "La Chamade", "Aimez-vous Brahms?" - FR- Writer
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Ms. Duras was born in southern Vietnam and lost her father at age 4. The family savings of 20 years bought the family a small plot in Cambodia, but everything was lost in a single season's flooding. The disaster killed her mother as a result. After high school in Saigon, Ms. Duras left Indochina to study law in Paris. As a young woman, she worked as a secretary in France's Ministry of Colonies from 1935 to 1941, before becoming a writer. She wrote 34 novels from 1943 to 1993, and became an enduring part of Paris's intellectual elite. In addition to her writing, she also directed about 16 films. For the film India Song (1975), she won France's Cinema Academy Grand Prix. She claimed to have rescued French president François Mitterand during World War II, when he was a resistance fighter and remained a friend and unconditional campaigner. Her most noted novel is "L'Amant", the story of a girl, from a poor French family in Indochina, who becomes the mistress of a wealthy Indochinese notable's son.- London-born Virginia Woolf came from a wealthy family and, unlike her brothers, received her education at home, an unusual step for the times. Her parents had both had children from previous marriages, so she grew up with a variety of siblings, stepbrothers and stepsisters. Her father was a well-respected editor and author and the former son-in-law of William Makepeace Thackeray. Author James Russell Lowell was her godfather, and Henry James and George Elliott were regular visitors and guests at the family home. As she recalled later in life, her most pleasant childhood memories were of the summers spent at the family home in Cornwall, by Porthminster Bay (the Godrevy Lighthouse there was the basis for her novel "To the Lighthouse").
The sudden death of Virginia's mother in 1895, when she was 13, and the passing of her sister two years later led to the first of Virginia's mental breakdowns. In 1904 her father died, which caused a complete mental and physical collapse and for a while she was sent to a mental institution to recover. Nervous breakdowns and bouts of severe depression tormented Virginia throughout her life, and the fact that as children she and her sister Vanessa were sexually abused by two of their stepbrothers added to her already considerable feelings of guilt and inferiority.
She studied at London's Kings College, where she became acquainted with such literary figures as Lytton Strachey, Saxon Sydney-Turner and Leonard Woolf. She married Woolf in 1912. Virginia was always ashamed of what she termed her "unattractive countenance", and once wrote that "being wanted [was] a pleasure that I have never felt". In 1922 she met Vita Sackville-West, and the two women began a relationship that lasted for almost ten years. She was said to have written her novel "Orlando" as a love letter to West.
After the publication of her novel "Between the Acts" she fell into a deep depression, exacerbated by the destruction of her London home by Nazi planes during the bombing of that city, and the less than enthusiastic critical reaction to her biography of her close friend Roger Fry. Her condition deteriorated to the point where she was unable to write or even read. She finally had a full-blown nervous breakdown. Unable and unwilling to continue, she wrote a note to her husband saying that "I am certain I am going mad again" and "I shan't recover this time . . . I can't fight any longer . . . I can't go on spoiling your life any longer." On March 28, 1941, she left her home, walked to the banks of the nearby River Ouse, loaded heavy stones into her pockets and walked into the water. She was 59 years old. - Patricia Highsmith was born on 19 January 1921 in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. She was a writer, known for The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Strangers on a Train (1951) and The Two Faces of January (2014). She died on 4 February 1995 in Locarno, Switzerland.Novelist Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995) - "The Talented Mr Ripley", "The two faces of January" - US
- Betty Smith was born on 15 December 1896 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), Joy in the Morning (1965) and Hour Glass (1946). She died on 17 January 1972.A tree grows in Brooklyn 1948 - US
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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was born on 7 May 1927 in Cologne, Germany. She was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Remains of the Day (1993). She was married to Cyrus Jhabvala. She died on 3 April 2013 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.The City of your Final Destination 2012, The Golden Bowl 2000, Jefferson in Paris 1995, The Courtesans of Bombay 1999 The Householder 1963 - born DE, lived IN, US- Stanislawa Przybyszewska was born on 1 October 1901 in Krakau, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now Kraków, Malopolskie, Poland]. She was a writer, known for Danton (1983), Television Theater (1953) and A Danton-ügy (1978). She died on 15 August 1935 in Free City of Danzig [now Gdansk, Pomorskie, Poland].Novelist Danton (L' affaire Danton) PL
- Simone Ernestine Lucie Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir was born on January 9, 1908, in Paris, France. She was raised in an upper class bourgeois Catholic family. Her father, named Georges de Beauvoir, had a passion for books and theatre. He taught Simone reading at the age of 3, and she attempted to write as soon as she could read. Her early development was that of a remarkably talented child.
Her bold and spontaneous classmate, Zaza (Elisabeth Le Coin), was her earliest and strongest friendship. Beauvoir and Zaza were both students of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whom Zaza loved. That relationship was disrupted by Zaza's controlling parents. Zaza died of encephalitis at age 20, leaving Beauvoir shocked and depressed. Zaza's short life was described by Beauvoir in several versions and in various literary forms; revealing Beauvoir's own post-traumatic scars. As Beauvoir was trying to soothe the pain of loss, she drifted away from the restrictive social order of French class society. For the rest of her life, Beauvoir harbored her traumatized inner child, and played a game of rebellion by advancing her individual choices. She had issues with social rules regulating the impulses of her own life, or having a stable relationship; and her life really turned into a series of impulses.
She was a Sorbonne student when she met Jean-Paul Sartre at the study group in 1929. At that time she was nicknamed 'Castor' (Beaver), with the dual meaning of her last name as English for the animal and its reputation as a dedicated worker. Beauvoir and Sartre both learned to hate the restrictions of upper class life. Both favored an 'authentic state of being'. Her rebellious nature played a painful role in their relationship from the very start. Knowing that her teaching assignment would separate them, Jean-Paul Sartre proposed to her. His proposal and marriage would lead to their teaching assignments in the same area. To his dismay, she turned down his proposal and left.
In 1932 Beauvoir was teaching in Rouen. There she met Olga Kozakiewich and began a relationship. In 1935 she introduced Sartre to her 18-year-old student Olga Kozakiewich and the three formed the 'family'. Beauvoir merged both relationships into a trio, that led to an unexpected and overwhelming outcome. While she imagined the trio would illustrate the 'authenticity' of their relationships; in reality the inevitable competition from the younger and independent-minded Olga became a growing threat. Beauvoir saw Olga as an object, a mere cast member of the game. She also overestimated her own tolerance. Eventually the trio failed before the challenge to reciprocate in recognition of each one's 'authentic' consciousness. Each member wrote a different account of the same events in their 'family' life.
While her academic studies focused on the role of individual choice; the realities of her private life conflicted with her theory. The scenario that caused her earlier traumatic experience of her separation from Zaza was being replayed with variations. Beauvoir continued experimenting with her 'open family' by including her other students and Sartre's students too. Other family member's 'authentic' consciousness added to social inventiveness and a sort of a group-therapy during the occupation of Paris in WWII. "Existence causes transformation of consciousness" - commented Jean-Paul Sartre.
The Jean-Simone-Olga 'family' affair is immortalized in her first novel 'L'Invitee' (She Came to Stay, 1943). At that time they were living in an occupied Paris. The open 'family' included several former students of both Beauvoir and Sartre; forming a unique social group with Olga Kazakiewich, Nathalie Sorokine and Jacques-Laurent Bost. The complex manner of relationships in the 'family' was somewhat based on the intellectual connection between students and teachers, who also included sharing of cooking and other domestic duties. Beauvoir was forced into a rare experience of cooking only during the war, while being unencumbered with domestic duties for the rest of her life. The author of 'The Second Sex' ate at cafés and lived in good hotels, always being served.
Sartre and Beauvoir traveled to the South of France where they wooed André Gide and André Malraux to their underground group 'Socialisme et Liberte'. Their active resistance soon turned into writing for 'Combat', published by 'Albert Camus'. In 1945 Beauvoir joined the editorial staff at 'Les Tempes Modernes', a leftist journal named after the Chaplin's film. Sartre, being the magazine's founder among other intellectual friends, published Beauvoir's works first, giving her a steady platform and publicity. A that time she published 'Le Sang des Autres' (The Blood of Others, 1945) a reflection of Resistance during WWII. Her friend 'Albert Camus' wrote a positive review on Beauvoir's book. Her only play 'Les Bouches Inuites' (Useless Mouths, 1945) was also called 'Who Shall Die'. Her long project-study of the ethical question of immortality led to her book 'All Men Are Mortal'. She was shocked by the poor reception of her weak and confusing book.
In 1947 Beauvoir was on a 5-month lecture tour of American Universities. There she met writer Nelson Algren. Their relationship lasted 17 years, complicating her other relationships. She called him "crocodile husband" for his American smile. He called her "frog wife" for being French, both called it love. She wrote a book 'L'Amerique au Jour le Jour' (America Day by Day, 1948) critical of social problems, class, and racial inequalities in the United States. Around 1950 Nelson Algren proposed to marry her in a letter. Beauvoir once again declined an offer of marriage. They wrote over three hundred passionate letters from 1947 - 1964. She caused much pain to Jean-Paul Sartre; who wanted a family, and finally in 1962, he adopted a Jewish Algerian girl, named Arlette El Kaim.
In America Beauvoir learned of Alfred Kinsey and his gender studies in the 1930's and 1940's. She started writing 'The Second Sex' at the time of the 'Kinsey Report' (1948). In 1949 her first excerpts from 'The Second Sex' appeared in France in the May, June, and July issues of the Sartre's magazine 'Les Tempes Modernes'. Her book was published in November of 1949, and made a sensation on both continents. By the 1950's Beauvoir had started to doubt her attractiveness. Her affair with reporter Claude Lanzmann, 17 years her junior, brought her new energy of assurance. They moved in together for 2 years, but she also needed to keep both the "crocodile husband" and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1954 she was awarded the Prix Goncourt for 'Les Mandarins' (The Mandarins) and purchased a small apartment in Montparnasse. There she would live with Sartre between her travels until her death.
In 'The Second Sex', first published in French in 1949, she presented a combination of 'feminism' with 'existentialism' with a 'Freudian' view of sexuality. The news was that it was written by a brilliant woman. She became recognized as one of the "founding mothers" of the modern day feminism. Her works were translated and published worldwide. The English translation of her main works were made by her principal English translator, Patrick O'Brian, the author of the story for the film 'Master and Commander'.
In 1955 Beauvoir and Sartre went on official visits to the Soviet Union and to communist China. As left-leaning academics they accepted the official invitations from the communist governments. Sartre and Beauvoir met with Nikita Khrushchev. She accepted the commission from both communist governments and wrote her 'La Longue Marche' (The Long March, 1957). She wrote in her letter to her "crocodile husband", Nelson Algren, that "the book was written largely to obtain money." She was apparently unconcerned by the brutal nature of the communist dictatorships. Beauvoir praised communism, the Chinese government, and the achievements of the Revolution. In 1960 she and Sartre accepted the invitation of Fidel Castro and made a trip to Cuba. At the same time she actively supported the Vietnamese Communist party. In 1967 Beauvoir and Sartre joined Bertrand Russell in the 'Tribunal of war Crimes in Vietnam'.
Her mother, Francoise de Beauvoir, whom she loathed at times, caused her more emotional pain than the millions of victims of communism. Her book 'A Very Easy Death' (1958) recounts the death of her mother, which was her way of coping with her loss; while she barely mentioned her father's death. During the illness of her mother, Beauvoir bonded with Sylvie Le Bon and developed a ten-year relationship with feelings that inspired her beautiful book 'All Said and Done' (1972). She adopted 'Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir' in 1980. In her later years Beauvoir's dependence on alcohol and amphetamine drugs led to Sartre's alienation from her. Sartre bought a house in the South of France and moved there with his adopted Jewish daughter, musician Arlette El Kaim Sartre. After the death of Sartre in 1980, Beauvoir published his letters to her (Lettres au Castor, 1983) as well as a very cold book of memoirs 'Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre', written from 1981-1985. Her bitter disputes with Sartre's daughter, Arlette El Kaim, ended only with Beauvoir's death.
Beauvoir was certainly not the first brilliant writer who turned her promiscuity on both continents into a money-making business under the mask of "academic writing" and "social experiment." Her writings show her profound knowledge and powerful thought which could be above the delusional ideals of both her own bourgeois past and Sartre's "utopian" and "communist" present. Her form of denial eventually led to an ordinary path of drugs and alcohol. Simone de Beauvoir died of complications of alcoholism on April 14, 1986. She was laid to rest in the grave of Jean-Paul Sartre in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse in Paris, France.FR - Lorraine Hansberry was born on 19 May 1930 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. She was a writer, known for A Raisin in the Sun (1961), American Playhouse (1980) and Camera Three (1955). She was married to Robert Nemiroff. She died on 12 January 1965 in New York City, New York, USA.A raisin in the Sun (Starring Sidney Poitié) 1961 US
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Edna O'Brien was born on 15 December 1930 in Tuamgraney, County Clare, Ireland. She is a writer and actress, known for Time Lost and Time Remembered (1966), Girl with Green Eyes (1964) and The Hard Way (1980). She was previously married to Ernest Gebler.- Edith Wharton (née Jones) was an American novelist and short story writer from New York City. She had insider knowledge of New York's upper class, which she realistically portrayed in her works. In 1921, Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She won the award for her historical novel "The Age of Innocence" (1920), where she portrayed the rigid worldview of the 1870s aristocrats of New York. She spend the last few decades of her life as an expatriate in France.
In 1862, Wharton was born in New York City. Her parents were George Frederic Jones and Lucretia Stevens Rhinelander. The Joneses were a wealthy and well-connected family in New York, having earned their wealth through real estate business. Through her mother, Wharton was a great-granddaughter of Lieutenant Colonel Ebenezer Stevens (1751 -1823), an officer of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. Through her father, Wharton was a first cousin, once removed, of the famed socialite Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (1830 - 1908). Astor was the de facto leader of the "Four Hundred", an informal grouping of New York's wealthy socialites who were seen as "champions of old money and tradition".
From 1866 to 1872, Wharton and her family made extensive travels across Europe. During her stay in Europe, Wharton became a fluent speaker in French, German, and Italian. She was educated by tutors and governesses. She also loved to read the books in her father's library, though her mother forbade her to read novels.
In 1871, Wharton faced the first crisis of her life. During an extended visit in the Black Forest of Germany, Wharton suffered from typhoid fever. The disease almost killed her. In 1872, the Joneses returned to the United States. They divided their time between New York City (in the winter) and Newport, Rhode Island (in the summer).
From an early age, Wharton started writing her own fictional works. By 1873, she had written an incomplete novel. In 1877, Wharton publisher her first work. It was an English translation of the German poem "Was die Steine Erzählen" ("What the Stones Tell") by Heinrich Karl Brugsch (1827 -1894). She was paid 50 dollars for her work, the first money she earned as a writer.
She had to use a pseudonym for her first published work, at the insistence of her parents. A writing career was out-of-the-question for proper "society women" of this era. Also in 1877, Wharton completed the novella "Fast and Loose". In 1878, she had a collection of her poems and translations privately published by her father. In 1879, one of her pseudonymous poems was published in the "New York World". In 1880, five of her poems were published in the literary magazine "Atlantic Monthly". Her family and her social circle discouraged her from continuing her promising literary career. Wharton did not write anything of note between 1880 and 1889, when one of her poems was published in "Scribner's Magazine".
In 1879, Wharton came out as a debutante at the age of 17. She soon was courted by Henry Leyden Stevens, son of the prosperous hotel owner Paran Stevens. Her family disapproved her new relationship. In 1881, Wharton and her family returned to Europe. George Jones' health had started failing, and he hoped that a stay in Europe would help him recover. In 1882, he died in Cannes, France due to a stroke.
In 1882, Wharton and her widowed mother returned to the United States. Wharton was briefly engaged to her persistent suitor Henry Leyden Stevens, but the engagement was canceled without any known explanation. In 1883, Wharton started living separately from her mother Lucretia. Lucretia had decided to settle permanently in France, where she lived until her death in 1901.
In 1885, Wharton married the sportsman Edward Robbins "Teddy" Wharton, who was 12 years older than her. The two of them shared a love of travel. Between 1886 and 1897, the couple spent several months each year in Europe. Their favorite destination was Italy; Wharton retained a love of this country for decades.
In the late 1880s, Teddy suffered from acute depression. As the years passed and his mental state declined, the couple ceased their extensive travels. They spent most of their time at "The Mount", their country house in Lenox, Massachusetts. Wharton herself reportedly struggled with asthma and bouts of depression in the late 19th century.
From 1908 to 1909, Wharton had a mid-life extramarital affair with the journalist William Morton Fullerton (1865 -1952). In 1913, Wharton divorced Teddy. Their marriage had lasted for 28 years, but caring for a chronically depressed man had taken its toll on her.
In 1911, as her marriage deteriorated, Wharton decided to move permanently to Paris, France. During World War I (1914-1918), Wharton supported the French war effort. In 1914, Wharton opened a workroom for unemployed women. In 1914, she helped set up the American Hostels for Refugees, to care for Belgian war refugees in France. In 1915. she helped found the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee, which sheltered about 900 Belgian refugees.
In 1915, Wharton wrote articles about France's front-lines. She regularly visited the trenches of the Western Front to get a first-hand view of the war, and was within earshot of artillery fire. Her articles were collected in the non-fiction book "Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort" (1915).
In 1916, President Raymond Poincaré appointed Wharton a chevalier (knight) of the Legion of Honour, the country's highest award, in recognition of her dedication to the war effort. During the war, she helped in the founding of tuberculosis hospitals. In 1919, following the war's end, Wharton decided to leave Paris and to settle in the French countryside. She purchased Pavillon Colombe, an 18th-century house located in Saint-Brice-sous-Foret. It remained her main residence until her death.
In 1921, Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction though her win was controversial. The three fiction judges employed for the contest voted that the award should be given to Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951). Columbia University's advisory board overturned their decision and decided that the winner was Wharton. Wharton was also nominated three times for the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1927, 1928, and 1930), without ever winning.
In 1934, Wharton published her autobiography under the title "A Backward Glance". The work is noted for omitting some of the more difficult aspects of her life, which became known after Wharton's death. Among these omitted aspects were Wharton's rather poor relationship with her mother Lucretia, the personal problems which she faced while married with Teddy, and her extramarital affair with Fullerton.
In June 1937, Wharton was working on a revised edition of an older work, when she suffered a heart attack. She recovered, but suffered a stroke in August of the same year. She died due to the stroke, at the age of 75. She was buried in the American Protestant section of the Cimetière des Gonards in Versailles. She was given war hero honors at her funeral.
Wharton remains one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20th century, in large part due to her astute criticism of the 19th-century upper class, and her vivid depictions of a world that was long gone even when she wrote her novels. Her prose works remain in print, while her poetry is largely forgotten.The Age of Innocence US by Martin Scorcese - Carson McCullers was born on 19 February 1917 in Columbus, Georgia, USA. She was a writer, known for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) and Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (1963). She was married to James Reeves McCullers Jr.. She died on 29 September 1967 in Nyack, New York, USA.The ballad of the sad café 1991 (based on novel), Albee's play US
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Ferber initially studied acting. She then worked as a reporter in Milwaukee and Chicago. Travels through America and Europe followed. Ferber became the author of interesting novels with a cultural-historical background. She often designed the plot in such a way that a female figure was in the foreground. In her works she depicts changing environments and American life in a realistic style. Her books often reveal a socially critical attitude. She expanded her narrative approach to create broad family and homeland novels that she linked to the history of the USA or the respective regions. It features the lower Mississippi region in the early 19th century, the time of the fur trade in Seattle, the run on oil in Oklahoma and the settlement of Texas.
She also wrote social comedies as stage plays, which were successful, as well as short stories, dramas and her autobiography. Some of her novels have been made into films. The most famous example is probably "Giant", the film of the same name, in German: "Giganten". It was made into a film in 1956 by director George Stevens with stars such as James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, Dennis Hopper and Rock Hudson. The film became a box office hit worldwide. Edna Ferber also provided the book for the musical "Show Boat" (premiered in 1927). It is about a critical attitude towards segregation and prejudices against blacks. This adaptation brought this socially critical, previously taboo topic to the musical stage for the first time. "Cimarron", a film title from 1960, is also based on the book title of the same name by Edna Ferber.
Her works include "Dawn O'Hara" (1911, German 1916), "Buttered Side Down" (1912), "Fanny Herself" (1917, German 1930: "This is Fanny"), "Half Portions " (1920), "The Girls" (1921, German 1928), "So Big" (1924, German 1927, "A Woman Alone" from 1962), "Show Boat" (1926, German 1929: "That Comedian Ship"), "Mother Knows Best" (1927), "The Royal Family" (1928, German 1931). This was followed by "American Beauty" (1931, German 1957: "The House of the Fathers"), "Dinner at Eight" (1932), "They Brought Their Women" (1933), "Come and Get it" (1935), "Stage Door" (1936), "A Peculiar Treasure" (191939), "Saratoga Drunk" (1941, German 1947), "The Land is Bright" (1941), "Great Son" (1945, German 1950) , "Bravo" (1948), "Ice Palace" (1958) and "Kind of Magic" (1963).Giant 1956 US- Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born in Montgomery, Alabama. She was strikingly beautiful and intelligent, but wild and impatient with learning. In the summer of 1918, shortly after graduating from high school, she met an Army lieutenant and aspiring novelist named F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance at the Montgomery Country Club. Following a stormy courtship, Zelda married him one week after the publication of his first novel. Their only child Frances Scott Fitzgerald Smith (nicknamed "Scottie") was born in October 1921. The early years of their marriage were ones of high living, financed by Scott's success as a writer and shaped by his drinking. Between 1922 and 1932, Zelda wrote articles for the New York Tribune, Scribner's magazine, Metropolitan magazine and The New Yorker.
At the age of 27, Zelda decided to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballerina, and began to study ballet in Paris. However, after two years of dedication, she realized she had started the pursuit of dance too late and had a nervous breakdown. Gradually her behavior became more erratic and obsessive, and the Fitzgeralds' relationship more strained. Zelda spent the next decade in and out of mental hospitals, including Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; Craig House in Beacon, New York; and Prangins Clinic in Switzerland. During one hospital stay, she wrote her only novel, "Save Me the Waltz", which was published in 1932. She also painted throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Though a woman of exceptional energy and ability, her doctors' failure to diagnose her mental disability, as well as the demise of her marriage, took its toll on her talent, and, as a result, Zelda published only a handful of articles and short stories in her lifetime. Her husband eventually moved to Hollywood to become a screenwriter, and died of a heart attack in his mistress' (Sheilah Graham) home. Eight years later, Zelda died in a fire while staying at the Highland mental facility in Asheville, North Carolina.Save me this waltz - Louisa May Alcott was born on 29 November 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA. She was a writer, known for Little Women (2019), Little Women (1994) and An Old-Fashioned Girl (1949). She died on 6 March 1888 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.Little Womern 1949
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Louise de Vilmorin was born on 4 April 1902 in Verrières-le-Buisson, Seine-et-Oise, France. She was a writer and actress, known for The Earrings of Madame De... (1953), The Lovers (1958) and Julietta (1953). She was married to Count Paul Pálffy ab Erdöd and Henry Leigh Hunt. She died on 26 December 1969 in Paris, France.- Director
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Ildikó Enyedi was born on 15 November 1955 in Budapest, Hungary. She is a director and writer, known for On Body and Soul (2017), Simon, the Magician (1999) and My Twentieth Century (1989).