Jean Stafford was born in 1915, the final of four children, to a Scottish-Irish American family in Covina, California. According to biographer David Roberts, John Stafford descended from a family of “adventurers and wanderers, mavericks and self-made men and women, liberal-minded and with an intellectual bent” (12). His dogged determination to keep writing in spite of a lack of success with his pulp westerns seemed to be the cause of some embarrassment for his family, and for Jean as she struggled to attain her own creative goals. However, Stafford strongly identified with her paternal ancestry and valued her father's dynamism over her mother's indefatigable domesticity. After being bankrupted, John Stafford relocated the family to Colorado. Jean was ten years old when the Staffords…
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Citation: Mays Wiebe, Mariianne. "Jean Stafford". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 22 February 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11928, accessed 23 November 2024.]
