SOURCE: Newman, Judie. “Biographical Introduction.” In Alison Lurie: A Critical Study, pp. 4-27. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2000.

In the following essay, Newman provides an overview of Lurie's early life and education, her formative experiences with the Poets' Theatre, the origin of recurring themes and characters in her fiction, and the inadequacies of her critical appraisal.

When Alison Lurie was first a student at Radcliffe, only one class in creative writing was available, taught by Robert Hillyer, a handsome minor poet whose manner struck Lurie as courtly, but curiously vague. (She did not suspect that he had a drinking problem.) For several weeks Hillyer collected the students' efforts, but never returned them, preferring to read aloud from his favourite books, slowly but with maximum emotion.

Finally one day he entered the room, pulled from his briefcase what looked like all the work he had ever received from us, heaped...