![]() In the 30 years since the book’s release, the author has managed to maintain her air of mystery. ![]() Tartt’s Mississippi roots permitted her association with Southern authors like Flannery O’Connor, Carson McCullers and Truman Capote.īut in reality, Tartt’s parents raised her in a far more prosaic environment than she implied for decades her mother was a secretary, and her father, a grocer who rose to prominence in local politics. Tartt had the aura of a fabulous tale, proving that the stereotype of Southern gentility and old money is not entirely, if at all, true. She dressed like a diminutive androgynous gentleman, wearing Oxford shoes, vests and ties, and her hair was coiffed into a perfect bob (no writer has self-branded any better since Tom Wolfe). That is, she weighs 90 pounds and is five feet tall. “I have the same measurements as Lolita,” she told a journalist. ![]() ![]() In the literary world, it was widely known that Tartt received a $450,000 advance (nothing excites the book market like a large figure), but Tartt contributed to the hoopla by crafting an irresistible image of herself. Suddenly, everyone was reading the 550-page novel about six Classics students at an imaginary university, Hampden College, who are involved in a murder. Before her book The Secret History was published in the fall of 1992, the 28-year-old author’s debut novel had generated so much buzz that by the time it hit bookstores, it was a major publishing event. ![]() You can’t say that success caught Donna Tartt by surprise. ![]()
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