Books by Sarah Churchwell
Sarah Churchwell is an academic, author and journalist. She is Chair of Public Understanding of the Humanities and Professor of American Literature at the School of Advanced Study at the University of London. She specialises in US cultural and literary history and her books include The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe and Careless People, a biography of The Great Gatsby.
“My book, Careless People, is really the biography of a book. It’s the true story behind Gatsby, a mix of biography, social history and literary essay. So it tells the story of the parties and speakeasies and high life in New York and Long Island, what Scott and Zelda were doing, and weaves that in with a broader social history about what’s happening in the world at the time – fascism is on the rise, for example – and then ties that back to Gatsby, explaining how this helps us understand the novel better. My book takes place over four months in 1922, which is when The Great Gatsby is set. The Great Gatsby takes place from June to September 1922, and my book takes place from September to December 1922: September is when the Fitzgeralds returned to New York from the Midwest. They moved to Great Neck, Long Island, which Fitzgerald would transform into West Egg in Gatsby, in October 1922, and the parties that would inspire the novel kicked off.” Read more...
Sarah Churchwell, Literary Scholar
Must Read: Rediscovering American Bestsellers
by Sarah Churchwell and Thomas Ruys Smith (editors)
Interviews with Sarah Churchwell
Books About The Great Gatsby, recommended by Sarah Churchwell
F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, set during a hedonistic zenith before the Great Depression, has fresh appeal today as we face down our own crisis, says American literature professor Sarah Churchwell, author of a biography of The Great Gatsby. She talks us through books to better understand the novel, its author and the era it was set in.
Interviews where books by Sarah Churchwell were recommended
Books About The Great Gatsby, recommended by Sarah Churchwell
F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, set during a hedonistic zenith before the Great Depression, has fresh appeal today as we face down our own crisis, says American literature professor Sarah Churchwell, author of a biography of The Great Gatsby. She talks us through books to better understand the novel, its author and the era it was set in.
