Frances Parkinson Keyes

An American novelist with an enormous following here and abroad, FRANCES PARKINSON KEYEScarries on her writing despite physical trials and tribulations which would have stopped a frailer person. Some of this she disclosed to Atlantic readers in her often quoted article, “The Cost of a Best-Seller,” and note in the poetic essay which follows she tells of the refreshment, spiritual and physical, which has come to her on her repeated visits to Spain, a country and a people that are dear to her.

The friendship between Theresa Helburn of the Theatre Guild and FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES began in Miss Winsor’s School, Boston, where they were members of the same class. Over the years as Mrs. Keyes was raising her family and writing her novels, she was sharing vicariously in the career of her friend Terry, who had begun as a poet, was one of the founders of the Theatre Guild, and later became its Executive Director. Here is the story of a friendship and of a woman who has achieved a unique place in the American theatre.

Those who have found enjoyment and comfort in FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES’S novels should realize that she has also written four books of nonfiction revealing her steadfast religious faith. The article which follows is an antidote for that fearful thinking in the headlines which is so contagious. Mrs. Keyes grew up in Boston, where she received a large part of her formal education: during her early married life,when she was living on a New Hampshire farm,her mother-in -law’s Bark Bay house became her urban center; and she has retained many ties with Boston. Her new book. Joy Street, published by Julian Messner,is a lively blend of her knowledge and affection.

As the wife of the Governor of New Hampshire, who was later to serve three terms in the United States Senate, FRANCES PARKINSON KEYEScame to her writing despite the claims of a busy life and the increasing handicap of ill health. “Satisfied Reflections of a Semi-Bostonianwhich‚” was published in the December, 1918‚ issue of the Atlantic, was the first of her articles to appear in a national magazine. In the years that followed, she slowly‚ painfully established herself as a novelist with an enormous following (her latest three novels have sold more than a million and a half copies), and now here is the inside story of what her best-sellers cost. Joy Street, her new book which is to be published this autumn, will be about Boston, the town in which she grew up and with which she has never lost touch, though recently she has spent her winters in Louisiana.

“We hope, of course, that American women—and American men—are going to grow better as time goes on; but it will probably be some time before we are perfect, and meanwhile, we will all vote, if any of us do.”