Patricia Cornwell

Sarah Dauncey (University of Cumbria)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

Born 9 Jun 1956
Activity 1982-ongoing

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States; England

Genres and Modes

Crime and Detective

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Other

Historian / Chronicler

Resources

Cornwell's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Patricia Cornwell, born Patricia Daniels, spent the first seven years of her life in Miami, Florida. She moved to North Carolina in 1963 with her mother and two brothers after the break-up of her parents’ marriage. Her childhood here was fraught with problems as her mother suffered from depression and had to be hospitalized. However, these difficulties led to her attachment to Ruth Graham, the wife of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, who was the subject of her first published book,

A Time For Remembering: The Ruth Graham Story

(1982). Cornwell’s Presbyterian background has been seen to influence the moral world of her fiction where representatives of human decency strive to protect communities from crime and violence. Although Cornwell admits to having “departed in some ways from…

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2428 words

Citation: Dauncey, Sarah. "Patricia Cornwell". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 November 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=6032, accessed 22 November 2024.]