Mignon G. Eberhart
Mignon G. Eberhart was an influential American author born on July 6, 1899, in University Place, Nebraska. She became notable for her contributions to the mystery fiction genre, with her first novel, *The Patient in Room Eighteen*, published in 1929. Eberhart's writing often featured strong female protagonists navigating murder and romance, set against exotic backdrops like England and the Caribbean. A graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University, she received an honorary degree in 1935 despite not completing her studies. Throughout her career, Eberhart published fifty-eight novels, many of which were bestsellers and adapted into feature films, radio, and television. Her work garnered significant recognition, including winning the Scotland Yard Prize and receiving the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award in 1970. Throughout her life, she traveled extensively and drew inspiration from these experiences, with her fiction reflecting diverse settings and themes. Eberhart passed away in 1996, leaving a lasting legacy in the mystery genre, often being compared to Agatha Christie.
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Subject Terms
Mignon G. Eberhart
Writer
- Born: July 6, 1899
- Birthplace: University Place, Nebraska
- Died: October 8, 1996
- Place of death: Greenwich, Connecticut
Biography
Mignon Good Eberhart was born in University Place, Nebraska, on July 6, 1899, to William Thomas Good and Margaret Hill Bruffey Good. She attended local schools and Nebraska Wesleyan University, a Methodist institution, from 1917 to 1920, but left without taking a degree. However, in 1935 the University awarded her an honorary degree. In 1923 she married a civil engineer, Alanson C. Eberhart; some of the protagonists in her novels were civil engineers. In 1946 she divorced him to briefly marry John Hazen Perry, whom she later divorced. In 1948 she remarried Eberhart.
Alanson Eberhart frequently traveled for business both at home and abroad, and Eberhart often accompanied him. The couple moved to Chicago in the early 1930’s, and remained there for a decade before moving to New Canaan, Connecticut. They returned to Chicago after World War II. Eberhart relocated to the East Coast during the final decades of her life. She was a lifelong traveler, and many of her novels are set in far-off destinations: England, the Caribbean, the Far East, and various European locales. Such locations added a touch of the exotic to her fiction.
Eberhart apparently began writing to amuse herself, and often wrote on various business trips with her husband. She chose mystery fiction because she read that the genre would be the most lucrative. Her first novel, The Patient in Room Eighteen was published in 1929, and in it she established the elements of the what would become the classic Eberhart crime novel: a capable female heroine who deals with murder and romance in a contemporary setting. Her second novel While the Patient Slept (1930) won the five thousand dollar Scotland Yard Prize. She achieved fame early and often her work was serialized in many of the popular magazines of the day like Collier’s, Ladies Home Journal, and The Saturday Evening Post. Until 1941, when she moved to Random House, her books appeared under the Doubleday Crime Club imprint, and in Great Britain by Lane, Collins, or Heineman. Many of her books were translated into many languages.
There were nine feature films adapted from her work. Most of them were made during the 1930’s, beginning with While the Patient Slept (1935). Five were from novels, three from stories, and she also wrote an original screenplay for The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936). More of her fiction was adapted for radio and television.
Mignon Eberhart died in a nursing home in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1996. Her exceptionally long life and her continued output— fifty-eight novels, nearly all of which were bestsellers, four collections of short stories, and two plays—meant that she overlapped several generations of crime writers and as many mystery styles. In 1970 she became the second woman to receive the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, and she later served as the organization’s president. She was also a member of the guiding faculty of the Famous Writers School. In her later years she was proclaimed the American Agatha Christie.