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Grace Metalious

Born

in Manchester, New Hampshire, The United States

September 08, 1924

Died

February 25, 1964

Genre

Literature & Fiction

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Grace Metalious was an American author, best known for the controversial novel Peyton Place.

She was born into poverty and a broken home as Marie Grace de Repentigny in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. Blessed with the gift of imagination, she was driven to write from an early age. After graduating from Manchester High School Central, she married George Metalious in 1943, became a housewife and mother, lived in near squalor — and continued to write.

With one child, the couple moved to Durham, New Hampshire, where George attended the University of New Hampshire. In Durham, Grace Metalious began writing seriously, neglecting her house and her three children. When George graduated, he took a position as principal at a school in Gilman Grace Metalious was an American author, best known for the controversial novel Peyton Place.

She was born into poverty and a broken home as Marie Grace de Repentigny in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. Blessed with the gift of imagination, she was driven to write from an early age. After graduating from Manchester High School Central, she married George Metalious in 1943, became a housewife and mother, lived in near squalor — and continued to write.

With one child, the couple moved to Durham, New Hampshire, where George attended the University of New Hampshire. In Durham, Grace Metalious began writing seriously, neglecting her house and her three children. When George graduated, he took a position as principal at a school in Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

At the age of 30, she began work in the fall of 1954 on a manuscript with the working title The Tree and the Blossom. By the spring of 1955, she had finished a first draft. However, she and her husband regarded The Tree and the Blossom as an unwieldy title and decided to give the town a name which could be the book's title. They first considered Potter Place (the name of a real community near Andover, New Hampshire). Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found Payton (the name of a real town in Texas). They combined this with Place and changed the "a" to an "e". Thus, Peyton Place was born.

Metalious — the "Pandora in bluejeans" — was said by some to be a dreadful writer and a purveyor of filth, but her most famous book changed the publishing industry forever. With regard to her success, she said, "If I'm a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste," and as to the frankness of her work, she stated, "Even Tom Sawyer had a girlfriend, and to talk about adults without talking about their sex drives is like talking about a window without glass."

Her other novels, all of which sold well but never achieved the same success as her first, were Return to Peyton Place (1959), The Tight White Collar (1961) and No Adam in Eden (1963).

Metalious died of alcoholism on February 25, 1964. "If I had to do it over again," she once remarked, "it would be easier to be poor. Before I was successful, I was as happy as anyone gets." She is buried in Smith Meeting House Cemetery in Gilmanton, New Hampshire. ...more

Combine Editions
Grace Metalious’s books

Average rating: 3.79 · 15,938 ratings · 1,599 reviews · 21 distinct works • Similar authors

	Peyton Place (Peyton Place, #1) by Grace Metalious, Ardis Cameron (introduction) 3.82 avg rating — 14,262 ratings — published 1956 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Return to Peyton Place (Peyton Place, #2) by Grace Metalious, Ardis Cameron (Contributor) 3.54 avg rating — 1,284 ratings — published 1959	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Peyton Place and Return to Peyton Place 3.87 avg rating — 273 ratings — published 1999 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Tight White Collar 3.48 avg rating — 139 ratings — published 1960 — 51 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	No Adam in Eden 3.43 avg rating — 88 ratings — published 1963 — 26 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	VIDAS FALSAS 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Return to Peyton Place 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — 4 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	POVRATAK U GRADIC PEJTON I - II 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	POVRATAK U GRADIC PEYTON 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Peyton place t2 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Grace Metalious…

Series by Grace Metalious

Peyton Place (2 books)
by

Grace Metalious,

Ardis Cameron (Contributor)

3.80 avg rating — 15,546 ratings

Quotes by Grace Metalious (?)

“There can be neither beauty, nor trust, nor security between a man and a woman if there is not truth.”
― Grace Metalious, Peyton Place

24 likes

“The public loves to create a hero....Sometimes I think they do it for the sheer joy of knocking him down from the highest peak. Like a child who builds a house of blocks and then destroys it with one vicious kick.”
― Grace Metalious, Peyton Place

tags: fame, hero, life

20 likes

“If I'm a lousy writer, then an awful lot of people have lousy taste.”
― Grace Metalious

tags: popularity, taste

14 likes

See all Grace Metalious's quotes »

Polls

January 2018 New School Poll

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood, 468 pages, 1996

68 votes, 19.5%

Dubliners by James Joyce, 207 pages, 1914

39 votes, 11.2%

On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 307 pages, 1957

29 votes, 8.3%

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming, 181 pages, 1953

24 votes, 6.9%

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, 127 pages, 1923

23 votes, 6.6%

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, 416 pages, 1980

22 votes, 6.3%

The Wreath (book one of Kristin Lavransdatter) by Sigrid Undset, 305 pages, 1920

17 votes, 4.9%

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, 368 pages, 1940

16 votes, 4.6%

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, 468 pages, 1913

16 votes, 4.6%

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, 437 pages, 1994

15 votes, 4.3%

The Sea Wolf by Jack London, 425 pages, 1904

13 votes, 3.7%

Chess Story by Stefan Zweig, 104 pages, 1941

12 votes, 3.4%

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 182 pages, 1962

12 votes, 3.4%

Light in August by William Faulkner, 507 pages, 1932

11 votes, 3.2%

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy, 337 pages, 1985

10 votes, 2.9%

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay, 189 pages, 1967

9 votes, 2.6%

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious, 384 pages, 1956

7 votes, 2.0%

The Four Just Men by Edgar Wallace, 134 pages, 1905

6 votes, 1.7%

349 total votes

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