Gwen Bristow (edit name/settings)

American author and journalist (1903-1980)

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OVER THE COURSE OF HER WRITING CAREER, which began in 1915 with a feature article in The State (Columbia, South Carolina) and culminated in 1980 with Golden Dreams, Gwen Bristow produced a large and varied repertoire.

In 1925, after studying a year at the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York, Bristow moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, to work as a reporter for the Times Picayune. From 1925 to 1934, she covered a range of stories including high-profile court cases and investigations and local jailbreaks, murders, and sports events. In 1926 she debuted as a literary writer, publishing her only volume of poetry, The Alien and Other Poems.

In 1930, Owen Davis bought the rights to The Invisible Host, the first of four mysteries Bristow co-authored with Bruce Manning, her husband, and adapted it for the stage and screen to ample critical and popular reception. Two other Bristow works were later made into movies: Tomorrow Is Forever (1943) in 1946 and Jubilee Trail (1950) in 1953.

Between 1937 and 1975 seven of Bristow's novels went through several printings and foreign translations, and over the course of her career, several were featured on best-selling lists, including those of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Boston Evening Transcript, and Publishers' Weekly.

Yet despite her near constant distinction as a literary writer throughout her lifetime, Gwen Bristow remains among the neglected Southern women writers; her place in American literary discourse has been all but lost, particularly in scholarship on the 1930s, the decade of her greatest critical and popular success.

Source: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3524/is_1_56/ai_n28974055/
She'll take her stand: Gwen Bristow's neo-agrarianism and visions of modernity
by Nghana Lewis - Mississippi Quarterly Winter 2002

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Alabama Women's Hall of Fame (inducted 1989)

Although Gwen Bristow was neither born in Alabama nor died there, she had very close Alabama connections. While her father was serving as minister of a Baptist church in Selma, she enrolled at Judson College. She graduated in 1924 with a double major in English and French.

After beginning her writing career by reporting junior high functions for her hometown newspaper, she continued writing for school papers through high school. She turned to play writing during her senior year and continued in that medium while a student at Judson, where several of her plays were presented.

Following graduation from Judson, she spent a year studying at the Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York City. She earned money typing theses, writing biographies for trade journals, and working as a secretary.

From Columbia, she went to work on the New Orleans Times-Picayune as a reporter. Her future husband, Bruce Manning from New York, was working for a rival newspaper, the Item. They were married a year later. A facetious scheme to get rid of a neighbor whose raucous radio disturbed them day and night led to the publication of their first book, The Invisible Host. Owen Davis made the tale of murder into a play and the movie The Ninth Guest was based on the same story.

The couple continued to write and to work intermittently for the newspaper until they moved to Connecticut, where Mr. Manning wrote stories for screen and radio scripts and Miss Bristow worked on her fourth novel - which failed to sell.

When Mr. Manning was offered a job in Hollywood, the couple moved there. After serving a term as a bored California homemaker, Miss Bristow began a novel about Louisiana, the first of a trilogy that carried two families from pre-Revolutionary days to World War I: Deep Summer, Handsome Road, and This Side of Glory. All three novels, published in the 1930's, became bestsellers. Other successes followed - Tomorrow Is Forever, Celia Garth, and Jubilee Trail Many of her stories were made into movies, and her novels were translated into a dozen different languages. Several of her books are in print today.

Having established herself as a versatile and prolific write, Miss Bristow earned a place in such biographical and critical works as Current Biography, Contemporary Authors, Atlantic Monthly, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Book Review, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who of American Women.

Source: http://www.awhf.org/bristow.html

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American author Gwen Bristow was born September 16, 1903 in Marion, South Carolina, the daughter of Louis Judson and Caroline Winkler Bristow.

From childhood, Gwen Bristow intended to be a writer; her first story was written when she was six and her first appearance in print came when she was twelve. At Judson College in Alabama she wrote plays and ghostwrote required essays for her friends. After a year at the Pulitzer School of Journalism, Columbia University, she joined the staff of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, for which she reported a wide variety of stories.

Her first published novels were four detective stories, written in collaboration with her husband Bruce Manning (married 1929), also a journalist. In 1934 the Mannings moved to Hollywood, where Bristow's husband began a career as a screenwriter.

Bristow's work is popular, of the sort generally considered romantic women's fiction. But her female protagonists are more rounded, more assertive and independent, more interesting than most in that genre. Her depiction of Southern history from the perspective of the poor white is a complement to the familiar myth of the magnolia-laden Old South. Her contribution is modest but significant.

Gwen Bristow died on August 17, 1980 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Source: http://www.jiffynotes.com/a_study_guides/book_notes/aww_01/aww_01_00146.html