Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Lindsay Sullivan (Cardiff University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1992

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel
- Bildungsroman

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

Donna Tartt reputedly received a $450,000 advance for

The Secret History

. In addition to being a commercial success, the novel has been translated into over twenty languages and has received much critical acclaim. One of the novel’s epigraphs is from Book 2 of Plato’s

Republic

: “Come then, and let us pass a leisure hour in storytelling, and our story shall be the education of our heroes”. Part murder mystery, part

Bildungsroman

and part campus novel,

The Secret History

tells the story of a group of Classics students who, in the act of re-creating a Dionysian bacchanal, accidentally kill a stranger, and then, to cover their tracks and preserve their freedom, murder one of their own group. The novel is narrated by (John) Richard Papen, and tells of his friendships with Henry Winter,…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2226 words

Citation: Sullivan, Lindsay. "The Secret History". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 03 May 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11693, accessed 26 November 2024.]

Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Dates

Places

Genres and Modes

Resources

Save this article

Leave Feedback