Paula Fox

Paula Fox (born April 22, 1923, Manhattan, New York, U.S.—died March 1, 2017, Brooklyn, New York) was an American author who wrote books for children and adults using a straightforward writing style that belied the turmoil below the surface. Her keen insight into the way people relate to one another and to themselves elevated her novels to a level above most popular fiction.

Early life, education, family, and work

Fox was born in New York City to Paul Hervey Fox, a novelist, playwright, and screenwriter who was a heavy drinker, and Elsie de Sola Fox, also a screenwriter. Her parents were not interested in raising a child, and Paula Fox was brought to a foundling home a few days after her birth. Her maternal grandmother, however, soon came to pick her up after hearing she had been left there. Growing up, Fox moved frequently, staying at times with various family members—including some occasional visits with her parents, as well as a stint on a sugar plantation in Cuba with her maternal grandmother—and family friends. With her itinerant childhood, she studied at schools in the United States, Canada, and Cuba before going on to Columbia University in New York. She also studied piano at the Juilliard School and worked as a news reporter in Europe before beginning a teaching career at the State University of New York in 1963. Fox won a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award in 1972 and was a Guggenheim fellow in the same year.

During this period, Fox married three times, the first two marriages ending in divorce. Her third marriage was in 1962, to Martin Greenberg (the brother of noted art critic Clement Greenberg); the two remained together until her death. Fox had two sons from her second marriage. She also had a daughter that she gave birth to when she was 20 years old and whom she gave up for adoption. They later reconnected when her daughter, as an adult, found her, and the two formed a close relationship.

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Writing career

Fox’s energetic writing style was evident in all her books. Isolation and the difficulty of communication between people, especially between children and adults, were themes Fox used in many of her novels. During most of her career, Fox was better known for her children’s books. These include Maurice’s Room (1966), Portrait of Ivan (1969), The Western Coast (1972), The Little Swineherd, and Other Tales (1978), The Moonlight Man (1986), Western Wind (1993), and Amzat and His Brothers: Three Italian Tales (1993). Her book The Slave Dancer (1973), a dark but historically accurate work showing the horrors of the slave trade in the mid-19th century, won the 1974 Newbery Medal. In 1978 Fox was awarded a Hans Christian Andersen Medal for all her children’s books. One-Eyed Cat (1984), which was a Newbery Honor Book in 1985, captures a young boy’s guilt and shame as he disobeys his father.

Fox wrote only a few adult novels, which were poorly received by her audience immediately upon publication and went out of print by the early 1990s. By the beginning of the 21st century, however, her books had made a comeback after being endorsed by novelist Jonathan Franzen. Fox’s novel Desperate Characters (1970) examines the married life and relationships of Sophie and Otto Bentwood; it was made into a motion picture the same year the book was published. Her other adult novels include A Servant’s Tale (1984) and The God of Nightmares (1990), among others. News from the World: Stories and Essays appeared in 2011. Both Borrowed Finery (2001) and The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe (2005) are memoirs.