For the first time in a deluxe hardcover edition, three eerily
powerful novels by a midcentury master of social satire and
psychological portraiture
Jean Stafford (1915-1979) made a bold entrance onto the American
literary scene in 1944 when her first novel, Boston Adventure became a
surprise best seller. She followed up this initial success with two more
acclaimed novels, The Mountain Lion (1944) and The Catherine Wheel
(1952), and became a prolific writer of short stories for The New
Yorker and other prominent magazines. (Her Collected Stories won the
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1970.) In later years serious health
problems made it increasingly difficult for her to write, and after her
death she became a somewhat overlooked figure in 20th-century American
literature. Complete Novels allows readers to rediscover a figure of
genuine consequence in American literature (Jonathan Yardley,
Washington Post) at the height of her powers.
Boston Adventure follows Sonia Marburg, the daughter of immigrant
parents, as she seeks to escape her impoverished childhood by becoming
the secretary-companion of the socially prominent Lucy Pride. The novel
won praise for its perceptive satire of upper-class Boston society,
while Stafford's portrayal of the inner life of her protagonist drew
comparisons to Henry James and Marcel Proust. In The Mountain Lion
Stafford drew on her childhood memories of southern California and
Colorado to tell the story of Molly Fawcett, her brother Ralph, and
their shared journey through the treacherous passage from childhood into
adolescence. Set in a country house in Maine, The Catherine Wheel
traces the tragic relationship between a lonely boy and his beloved aunt
during a summer in which each of them secretly seeks revenge against the
people who have betrayed them.
