Stafford, Jean (1915-1979), was an American novelist and short-story writer famous for her sensitive portrayals of lonely, troubled individuals. Much of her fiction deals with self-conscious children confronted by a difficult, disappointing adult world. She also wrote about unhappy women trying to discover satisfaction through, or in spite of, the expectations of marriage and motherhood. Stafford won praise for her rich, realistic prose style. She received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford (1969).
Stafford’s first novel, Boston Adventure (1944), explores lower-class life as seen through the eyes of an immigrant girl. The Mountain Lion (1947) traces the problems of a teenaged brother and sister growing up. The Catherine Wheel (1952) is a densely psychological novel dealing with the destructive nature of isolation and ignorance. Stafford’s short fiction was collected in Children Are Bored on Sunday (1953) and Bad Characters (1964). Stafford also wrote several works for children. Stafford was born on July 1, 1915, in Covina, California. She died on March 26, 1979.
