Donna Tartt

Author profile

born

December 23, 1963 in Greenwood, Mississippi, The United States

gender

female

genre

Literature & Fiction, Short Stories

About this author

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Donna Tartt (born 23 December 1963) is an American writer who received critical acclaim for her two novels, The Secret History (1992) and The Little Friend (2002). Tartt was the 2003 winner of the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend.

The daughter of Don and Taylor Tartt, she was born in Greenwood, Mississippi but raised 32 miles away in Grenada, Mississippi. At age five, she wrote her first poem, and she first saw publication in a Mississippi literary review when she was 13 years old.

Enrolling in the University of Mississippi in 1981, she pledged to the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma. Her writing caught the attention of Willie Morris while she was a freshman. Following a recommendation from Morris, Barry Hannah, then an Ole Miss Writer...more

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Books by Donna Tartt

Average rating: 3.86 · 45,057 ratings · 4,241 reviews · 12 distinct works

	The Secret History 4.00 avg rating — 35,409 ratings — published 1992 — 69 editions	My rating:
	The Little Friend 3.30 avg rating — 8,798 ratings — published 2002 — 36 editions	My rating:
	The Secret History & The Little Friend 4.21 avg rating — 28 ratings	My rating:
	A Christmas Pageant 4.08 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 1993	My rating:
	Het Land van de Papaver 2.00 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2004	My rating:
	Un Juego De Niños 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2002	My rating:
	Micul prieten 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 2011	My rating:
	Eine Strumpfbandnatter by Donna Tartt, Paul Herwig (Narrator), Rainer Schmidt (Translator) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	My rating:
	نقشه‌هایت را بسوزان by Robyn Joy Leff, Jess Row, George Saunders 3.07 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1388	My rating:
	Fairy Tale Review, The Green Issue: The Green Issue by Kate Bernheimer, Brian Baldi (Contributor), Jeanne Marie Beaumont (Contributor) 4.09 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2007	My rating:

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Quotes by Donna Tartt

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

75 people liked it

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

58 people liked it

“Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?”
― Donna Tartt, The Secret History

tags: first-sentence , literature

43 people liked it

See all Donna Tartt's quotes »

Polls

What would you like to read as a group for June 2011?

Lincoln by Gore Vidal

5 votes, 38.5%

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

4 votes, 30.8%

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

3 votes, 23.1%

Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

1 vote, 7.7%

13 total votes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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