"An Environment Remembered": Setting in the Novels of Frances Parkinson Keyes
Abstract
When asked about the inspiration for her writings, Frances Parkinson Keyes replied that her books have sprung from various sources: "Sometimes it is an impression, very often it is a real experience.... An anecdote here, an experience there, an environment remembered." An ability to translate a strong sense of the real world, of environments remembered precisely and vividly, is a major factor in Keyes's outstanding success as "one of America's best-loved storytellers." In over thirty novels, from 1919 to 1968, her exhaustively researched and meticulously described settings have appealed to varying interests of readers: the exoticism of the unfamiliar, the fascination with the powerful elite in a region, nostalgia for old customs, and the interest in the establishment of cultural and moral roots within a clearly defined setting.