Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

Dismissed by most critics, it nevertheless remained on The New York Times bestseller list for more than a year and became an international phenomenon. In the summer of 1956, the Metalious family moved into a new hilltop house, and a publicity campaign was launched for the book, published on September 24, 1956. Messner immediately acquired the novel and asked Nevler to step in as a freelance editor for final polishing before publication. ('Kitty') Messner, president and editor-in-chief of the small firm Julian Messner. In the summer of 1955, Leona Nevler, a freelance manuscript reader, read it for Lippincott and liked it, but knew it was too steamy for a major publisher to accept. Metalious found an agent, Jacques Chambrun, who submitted the draft manuscript to three major publishers. Truly a composite of all small towns where ugliness rears its head, and where the people try to hide all the skeletons in their closets.' Other accounts say her publishers changed the name. Thus Peyton Place was born, prompting her comment, 'Wonderful-that's it, George. They combined this with Place and changed the 'a' to an 'e'. Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found 'Payton' (a town in Texas). They first considered 'Potter Place' (the name of a real community near Andover, New Hampshire).

By her husband's account, both Metaliouses regarded The Tree and the Blossom as an unwieldy title and decided to give the town a name that could be the book's title. By the spring of 1955, she had finished the first draft. The novel had the working title The Tree and the Blossom. In the fall of 1954, at age 30, Metalious began work on a manuscript about the dark secrets of a small New England town. When George graduated, he took a position as principal at a school in Gilmanton, New Hampshire.

In Durham, Grace Metalious began writing seriously. With one child, the couple moved to Durham, New Hampshire, where George attended the University of New Hampshire. The couple lived in near squalor, but she continued to write. After graduation, she married George Metalious in a Catholic church in Manchester in 1943, and became a housewife and mother.

Writing from an early age, at Manchester Central High School, she acted in school plays. Marie Grace DeRepentigny was born into poverty and a broken home in the mill town of Manchester, New Hampshire. Grace Metalious (Septem– February 25, 1964) was an American author known for her novel Peyton Place, one of the best-selling works in publishing history.

Return to Peyton Place by Grace Metalious