In Charmed Circle (1974), his biography of Gertrude Stein, James R. Mellow says that writing "about the past is like attempting to restore an old house: you can never bring it back to what it once was, but you can hope to make it livable again." Mellow's metaphor aptly describes his three biographies of American authors: in them he restores the lives of Stein, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, providing livable texts where his readers can linger with the authors. Both critically and popularly acclaimed, Mellow's biographies trace in detail the personal lives and literary careers of his subjects and in each case yield a distinctive portrait of an already well-known author.

James Robert Mellow was born on 28 February 1926 in Gloucester, Massachusetts. His parents, James R. Mellow (a mechanical engineer) and Cecilia Margaret Sawyer Mellow, are indirectly characterized in the dedication to Charmed Circle: "For my...