Peyton Place, and, Return to Peyton Place - Hardcover

Metalious, Grace

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0517204770 ISBN 13: 9780517204771

Publisher: Random House Value Publications, 1999

Synopsis

Peyton Place, published in 1956, has sold over 10,000,000 copies world-wide and remains the fourth biggest selling novel of all time. Its sequel, Return to Peyton Place, published in 1959, was a national best-seller for many, many months. Considered scandalous it its time of publication, Peyton Place, stirred controversy with its explicit—for the time—depictions of sex and sins in a small New England town. Today, the once shocking novel and its sequel seem tame, and are taught in college English courses as classics of their time, well-written and honest in the evocation of the passions, jealousies, and secrets of small-town America.

About this title

Review:

"a rip-roaring good yarn. If the term "page turner" has any complimentary meaning, it applies here...İGrace¨ Metalious has lasted as a force in American life."--Washington Times

Washington Times"

Vanity Fair"

Courier-Gazette (ME)"

The Independent"

a rip-roaring good yarn. If the term page turner has any complimentary meaning, it applies here...[Grace] Metalious has lasted as a force in American life. Washington Times"

Ten years ago, Ardis Cameron, a professor at the University of Southern Maine, was astonished to discover the title was out of print, and mounted a one-woman campaign to resurrect it. She eventually persuaded Northeastern University Press to reissue the novel, and wrote a Camille Paglia-worthy introduction that casts Grace as a literary Joan of Arc, sword drawn, swinging at the oppressive social conventions of the 50s. The book, says Cameron, "spoke about things that were not discussed in polite society, and allowed people to talk about all sorts of issues -- but particularly their own sense of being different in the 1950s. Vanity Fair"

Metalious is well on her way to academic respectability, too. Ardis Cameron, an English professor at the University of Southern Maine, helped get Peyton Place back between soft covers a few years ago with an introduction describing it as "America's first blockbuster" and a key to understanding both the stifling cultural conformity of the 1950s and the first stirrings of rebellion against it. The Independent"

Peyton Place, six decades on. In 1999 Northeastern University Press reissued it in its Hardscrabble Books line of novels devoted to New England. It remains in print today, ever reproachful and ever steamy. Kirkus"

Peyton Place is hot, even by today's standards. Everything, including the trees, seem to heave with sexuality. Sunday (Concord) Monitor"

Book Description:

A searing portrait of small-town hypocrisy written in the page-turning style that found PP a permanent place in publishing history
* once a banned book, this novel spawned a TV series and a film

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Value Publications
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0517204770
• ISBN 13: 9780517204771
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 622