Hortense Calisher (December 20, 1911 – January 13, 2009) was an American writer of fiction.
Born in New York City, New York and a graduate of Hunter College High School (1928) and Barnard College (1932), Calisher was the daughter of a young German immigrant and an older father from a Southern family she described as "volcanic to meditative to fruitfully dull, and bound to produce someone interested in character, society, and time".
She died at th...
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Hortense Calisher (December 20, 1911 – January 13, 2009) was an American writer of fiction.
Born in New York City, New York and a graduate of Hunter College High School (1928) and Barnard College (1932), Calisher was the daughter of a young German immigrant and an older father from a Southern family she described as "volcanic to meditative to fruitfully dull, and bound to produce someone interested in character, society, and time".
She died at the age of 97 on 15 January 2009 in Manhattan.
Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac voice, sometimes compared with Eudora Welty, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Henry James. Critics generally considered Calisher a type of neo-realist and often both condemned and praised for her extensive explorations of characters and their social worlds. She was definitely at odds with the prevailing writing...
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