{"id":6409,"date":"2016-05-17T14:11:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T14:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lichen.csd.sc.edu\/sce\/entries\/bristow-gwen\/"},"modified":"2022-07-19T19:24:12","modified_gmt":"2022-07-19T19:24:12","slug":"bristow-gwen","status":"publish","type":"entry","link":"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/bristow-gwen\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristow, Gwen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Novelist. Gwen Bristow, who would come to be referred to as \u201cCarolina\u2019s Best Seller,\u201d was born in Marion on September 16, 1903, the daughter of the Baptist minister and hospital superintendent Louis Judson Bristow and Caroline Cornelia Winkler. She made her writing debut in 1916 in Columbia\u2019s <em>State <\/em>newspaper as a seventh-grade Taylor School reporter. Although she attended Columbia High School, she graduated at Abbeville, where her father had returned as pastor. After attending Anderson College for a year, she transferred to Judson College in Marion, Alabama, where in 1924 she received her A.B. degree. In 1925, following a year\u2019s study at Columbia University\u2019s Pulitzer School of Journalism in New York, she became a reporter for the <em>Times-Picayune <\/em>in New Orleans. There she met and married Bruce Manning, a newspaper reporter who eventually became a Hollywood screenwriter and film producer. Together they collaborated on the writing of four mystery novels between 1930 and 1932: <em>The Invisible Host <\/em>(1930), <em>The Gutenburg Murders <\/em>(1931), <em>Two and Two Make Twenty-Two <\/em>(1932), and <em>The Mardi Gras Murders <\/em>(1932).<\/p>\n<p>By the summer of 1934 they had moved to California, where Bristow began to experiment with historical fiction. The result of this was the publication of <em>Deep Summer <\/em>(1937), her first best-seller and the first installment in her Louisiana Plantation Trilogy. The next two in the series soon followed<em>: The Handsome Road <\/em>(1938) and <em>This Side of Glory <\/em>(1940). Her World War II romance novel, <em>Tomorrow Is Forever, <\/em>appeared in 1943 and in 1946 was made into a film starring Orson Welles and Claudette Colbert. The next two novels, <em>Jubilee Trail <\/em>(1950) and <em>Celia Garth <\/em>(1959), became Literary Guild selections. By the time of the publication of the latter book, which is a story of Charleston in the Revolutionary War, sales of Bristow\u2019s books had reached nearly three million copies, exclusive of book clubs. <em>Calico Palace, <\/em>her last novel, was published in 1970. Bristow\u2019s final book, <em>Golden Dreams, <\/em>came out in 1980 and was a nonfiction account of the gold rush and the founding of California.<\/p>\n<p>Bristow\u2019s natural storytelling ability, neatly devised and detailed plots, sharply drawn characters, telling eye for landscape and its detail, use of common sense, gift for dramatic effect, and emotional sincerity were the characteristics of her work that critics and reviewers singled out for praise. Margaret Wallace spoke of her \u201csolid and versatile talent as a novelist.\u201d The critic Susan Quinn Berneis claimed that Bristow\u2019s greatest skill was reserved for \u201cthe unfolding of American history as displayed around the lives of the people who created it.\u201d And Eugene Armfield remarked that she belonged \u201camong those Southern novelists who [were] trying to interpret the South and its past in critical terms.\u201d Furthermore, her books had universal appeal: various ones were translated into German, French, Italian, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Czechoslovakian, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese.<\/p>\n<p>Bristow died in New Orleans on August 16, 1980. On April 15, 2000, she was inducted into the South Carolina Academy of Authors.<\/p>\n<p>Bristow, Gwen. Papers. South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia.<\/p>\n<p>Lowry, Julia B. \u201cCarolina\u2019s Gwen Bristow Finds She\u2019s Obliged to Write!\u201d Columbia <em>State Magazine, <\/em>November 5, 1950, pp. 6\u20137.<\/p>\n<p>MacNebb, Betty L. \u201cGwen Bristow: Carolina\u2019s Best Seller.\u201d <em>South Carolina Magazine <\/em>12 (July 1949): 8, 10.<\/p>\n<p>Theriot, Billie J. \u201cGwen Bristow: A Biography with Criticism of Her Plantation Trilogy.\u201d Ph.D. diss., Louisiana State University, 1994.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Novelist. Gwen Bristow, who would come to be referred to as \u201cCarolina\u2019s Best Seller,\u201d was born in Marion on September 16, 1903, the daughter of the Baptist minister and hospital superintendent Louis Judson Bristow and Caroline Cornelia Winkler. She made her writing debut in 1916 in Columbia\u2019s State newspaper as a seventh-grade Taylor School reporter. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-6409","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-abbeville-county","ecms-b","ecms-civil-rights-era-1955-1969","ecms-education","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-great-depression-1930-1938","ecms-jazz-age-1919-1929","ecms-literature","ecms-midlands","ecms-post-war-america-1946-1954","ecms-recreation-and-leisure","ecms-richland-county","ecms-the-modern-state-1970-present","ecms-turn-of-the-century-1890-1913","ecms-upstate","ecms-women","ecms-world-war-i-1914-1918","ecms-world-war-ii-1939-1945"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Bristow, Gwen - South Carolina Encyclopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/bristow-gwen\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bristow, Gwen - South Carolina Encyclopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Novelist. Gwen Bristow, who would come to be referred to as \u201cCarolina\u2019s Best Seller,\u201d was born in Marion on September 16, 1903, the daughter of the Baptist minister and hospital superintendent Louis Judson Bristow and Caroline Cornelia Winkler. She made her writing debut in 1916 in Columbia\u2019s State newspaper as a seventh-grade Taylor School reporter. 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