Jean Stafford

Mariianne Mays Wiebe (University of Manitoba)

Ed. by Stephen E. Meats, Pittsburg State University
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 1 Jul 1915
Died 26 Mar 1979
Activity 1939-1978

Places

Born in United States
Active in United States

Activities

Primary

Children's/Young Adult writer
Novelist
Story-writer

Other

Essayist
Journalist

Resources

Stafford's Works

Save to Bookshelf

Jean Stafford was born in 1915, the final of four children, to a Scottish-Irish American family in Covina, California. According to biographer David Roberts, John Stafford descended from a family of “adventurers and wanderers, mavericks and self-made men and women, liberal-minded and with an intellectual bent” (12). His dogged determination to keep writing in spite of a lack of success with his pulp westerns seemed to be the cause of some embarrassment for his family, and for Jean as she struggled to attain her own creative goals. However, Stafford strongly identified with her paternal ancestry and valued her father's dynamism over her mother's indefatigable domesticity. After being bankrupted, John Stafford relocated the family to Colorado. Jean was ten years old when the Staffords…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2118 words

Citation: Mays Wiebe, Mariianne. "Jean Stafford". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11928, accessed 25 November 2024.]