Jennie Fields | |
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Born | Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | July 25, 1953
Occupation | Novelist |
Education | University of Illinois (BFA) Iowa Writers' Workshop (MFA) |
Genre | Fiction |
Notable works | The Age of Desire (2012) |
Website | |
www |
Jennie Fields (born July 25, 1953) is an American novelist. Her fourth novel, The Age of Desire, is based on the life of American writer Edith Wharton and her fifth novel, cold war thriller Atomic Love, is an international best seller and Book of the Month Club selection. [1] [2]
Fields was born in Chicago, Illinois and was raised in Highland Park, Illinois.
Fields earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in creative writing and painting from the University of Illinois and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. [3] [4] Fields had a successful career in advertising, starting as a copywriter in Chicago, and going on to become a creative director at several international advertising agencies in Chicago and New York. [5] Her advertising credits include McDonald's jingles (while at DDB Needham), including "Menu Chant", which was sung by, among others, Carl Giammarese of The Buckinghams, [6] the "We're All Connected" campaign [7] [8] for New York Telephone (while at Young & Rubicam), and the Lunesta Moth campaign (while at McCann Erickson) for which she won an Effie award. [9]
Fields now lives in Nashville, TN, where she is a full-time writer. [10]
Fields has published five novels: Lily Beach, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, The Middle Ages, The Age of Desire, and Atomic Love . Her first novel Lily Beach (Grand Central Publishing 1997), is the story of a young artist in the 1960s, struggling to find her place in a rapidly changing world. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, (HarperCollins 1997) is the story of six people who live on the same street in Brooklyn, and what happens to them over the course of a year. Her third novel, The Middle Ages (HarperCollins 2002) tells the story of an architect who only finds the life she's really seeking when she loses her job.
In 2012, Fields published The Age of Desire (Penguin Group, 2012) based on the life of American author Edith Wharton. The novel centers on Wharton's illicit affair with journalist William Morton Fullerton and that affair's effect on both her unstable husband, Edward R. "Teddy" Wharton, and her close friendship with her lifelong friend and confidant, her literary secretary Anna Bahlmann. Until recently, little had been known about Bahlmann but Fields was one of the first [11] to have access to over 100 previously unknown letters from Wharton to Bahlmann [12] that were auctioned in 2009. The letters are now in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University [13] and form the basis of another 2012 publication, My Dear Governess: The Letters of Edith Wharton to Anna Bahlmann, edited by Irene Goldman-Price.
Her fifth novel, Atomic Love (Penguin Random House 2020) has been translated into ten languages and was a Book of the Month Club selection. Set in Chicago in the 1950s, it tells the story of a female physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and who must decide whether to help the FBI by spying on a former colleague - and lover - who the FBI suspects of passing nuclear secrets to Russia. [14] The author said inspiration came from her mother, who was a University of Chicago-trained biochemist in the 1950s. [15]
Fields' books have been published in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the UK.
Judith Blume is an American writer of children's, young adult, and adult fiction. Blume began writing in 1959 and has published more than 26 novels. Among her best-known works are Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. (1970), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (1972), Deenie (1973), and Blubber (1974). Blume's books have significantly contributed to children's and young adult literature. She was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2023.
Edith Mary Pargeter, also known by her pen name Ellis Peters, was an English author of works in many categories, especially history and historical fiction, and was also honoured for her translations of Czech classics. She is probably best known for her murder mysteries, both historical and modern, and especially for her medieval detective series The Cadfael Chronicles.
Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray, realistically, the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, for her novel, The Age of Innocence. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, in 1996. Her other well-known works are The House of Mirth, the novella Ethan Frome, and several notable ghost stories.
Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American lawyer, novelist, historian, and essayist. He is best known as a novelist who parlayed his experiences into books exploring the experiences and psychology of American polite society and old money. His dry, ironic works of fiction continue the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton. He wrote his novels initially under the name Andrew Lee, the name of an ancestor who cursed any descendant who drank or smoked.
The Age of Innocence is a 1920 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It was her eighth novel, and was initially serialized in 1920 in four parts, in the magazine Pictorial Review. Later that year, it was released as a book by D. Appleton & Company. It won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Wharton the first woman to win the prize. Though the committee had initially agreed to give the award to Sinclair Lewis for Main Street, the judges, in rejecting his book on political grounds, "established Wharton as the American 'First Lady of Letters'". The story is set in the 1870s, in upper-class, "Gilded Age" New York City. Wharton wrote the book in her 50s, after she was already established as a major author in high demand by publishers.
The House of Mirth is a 1905 novel by American author Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Lily Bart, a well-born but impoverished woman belonging to New York City's high society in the 1890s. The House of Mirth traces Lily's slow two-year social descent from privilege to a lonely existence on the margins of society. In the words of one scholar, Wharton uses Lily as an attack on "an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class."
Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis was an American literary scholar and critic. He gained a wider reputation when he won a 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, the first National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, and a Bancroft Prize for his biography of Edith Wharton. The New York Times called the book "a beautifully wrought, rounded portrait of the whole woman, including the part of her that remained in shade during her life" and said that the "expansive, elegant biography ... can stand as literature, if nothing else."
Margaret Ayer Barnes was an American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
The Custom of the Country is a 1913 tragicomedy of manners novel by the American author Edith Wharton. It tells the story of Undine Spragg, a Midwestern girl who attempts to ascend in New York City society.
Pauline Lord was an American stage and film actress.
The Touchstone is a novella by American writer Edith Wharton. Written in 1900, it was the first of her many stories describing life in old New York.
Murrey Mizell "Buddy" Harman, Jr. was an American country music session musician.
The Old Maid is a 1934 play by American playwright Zoë Akins, adapted from Edith Wharton's 1924 novella of the same name. The play as published has six "episodes", covering twenty-one years of time. It has a large cast, and three settings; one is used for the last four episodes (scenes). The story concerns two women, cousins, who allow rancor over a lost love to become a struggle for the illegitimate daughter of one.
Jennie Gerhardt is a 1911 novel by Theodore Dreiser.
The Reef is a 1912 novel by American writer Edith Wharton. It was published by D. Appleton & Company. It concerns a romance between a widow and her former lover. The novel takes place in Paris and rural France, but primarily features American characters. While writing the novel, Edith Wharton visited England, Sicily, and Germany, among other locations. In a letter to Bernard Berenson in November 1912, Wharton expressed regret regarding her novel, calling it a “poor miserable lifeless lump”. She wrote, “Anyhow, remember it’s not me, though I thought it was when I was writing it—& that next time I’m going to do something worthwhile!!”
William Morton Fullerton was an American print journalist, author and foreign correspondent for The Times. Today he is best known for having a mid-life affair with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edith Wharton.
The House of Mirth is a 1918 American silent melodrama film directed by French film director Albert Capellani, starring Katherine Harris Barrymore as Lily Bart. It is a cinema adaptation of Edith Wharton's 1905 novel The House of Mirth and the first-ever cinema adaptation of any of her work. Metro Pictures put many efforts into the film in order to turn the original novel into an "all-star cast" film to earn popularity, as Metro Pictures itself announced that the film was "one of the most important productions" during 1918, and that the film contained "the strongest and the most distinguished cast ever selected for the screen". Initially, Emmy Wehlen starred in the role of Lily Bart in the film. Later, she was replaced by Katherine Harris Barrymore. The film contributed to the huge success of Metro Pictures that year. It is not known whether the film currently survives.
The Rise of Jennie Cushing is a 1917 American silent drama film directed by Maurice Tourneur, produced by Famous Players–Lasky, and distributed by Artcraft Pictures, an affiliate of Paramount Pictures. The story based upon the novel The Rise of Jennie Cushing by Mary Watts and stars Broadway's Elsie Ferguson. The film marked Ferguson's second motion picture. It is a lost film.
Mary Cadwalader Rawle Jones was an American author, socialite, and social leader during the Gilded Age.
Jill Moser is a New York-based artist whose paintings, drawings, prints, collages and artist's books explore the intersections of painting, writing, and the animated image.