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Elizabeth Appleton
From amazon.com : Marriage to a college professor is a contented one for a fashionable society girl until the war years bring change and an illicit love affair.
279 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
5 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
John O'Hara
248 books296 followersAmerican writer John Henry O'Hara contributed short stories to the New Yorker and wrote novels, such as
BUtterfield 8
(1935) and
Ten North Frederick
(1955).
Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...
Best-selling works of John Henry O'Hara include Appointment in Samarra . People particularly knew him for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara, a keen observer of social status and class differences, wrote frequently about the socially ambitious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O&#...
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 26, 2025
Dopo “Un pugno di polvere”, ho deciso di conoscere meglio O’Hara con l’altro suo romanzo pubblicato in Italia, “Elizabeth Appleton”.
La storia è molto simile alla precedente - è ambientata in una città di provincia a cavallo della Seconda Guerra Mondiale e denuncia il conformismo e l’ipocrisia della società dell’epoca -, ma è ancora più intima, indagando nel profondo la protagonista. Elizabeth è una donna dell’alta società newyorkese che decide di sposare un uomo di ceto sociale inferiore e di seguirlo nella sua carriera accademica. Snob e abituata a una vita di lusso e feste, Elizabeth si sente soffocare dalla vita noiosa e puritana di Spring Valley, una piccola cittadina di provincia, e trova sfogo in due modi: con una relazione extraconiugale e facendo di tutto per promuovere la carriera del marito. Così facendo, riesce a soddisfare i suoi bisogni principali - il piacere sessuale e l’ambizione - senza rinunciare al ruolo di moglie e madre voluto dalla società dell’epoca.
Come “Un pugno di polvere”, i punti di forza del romanzo sono i dialoghi brillanti, l’introspezione e la modernità dei temi trattati - tenendo conto che il libro è del 1963, è piuttosto rivoluzionario nel suo modo di descrivere l’intimità delle donne, incluso il loro bisogno di soddisfare i piaceri sessuali al pari degli uomini.
O’Hara si conferma un grande autore, erede di Fitzgerald e anticipatore di Yates, un autore che meriterebbe una fama decisamente maggiore.
La storia è molto simile alla precedente - è ambientata in una città di provincia a cavallo della Seconda Guerra Mondiale e denuncia il conformismo e l’ipocrisia della società dell’epoca -, ma è ancora più intima, indagando nel profondo la protagonista. Elizabeth è una donna dell’alta società newyorkese che decide di sposare un uomo di ceto sociale inferiore e di seguirlo nella sua carriera accademica. Snob e abituata a una vita di lusso e feste, Elizabeth si sente soffocare dalla vita noiosa e puritana di Spring Valley, una piccola cittadina di provincia, e trova sfogo in due modi: con una relazione extraconiugale e facendo di tutto per promuovere la carriera del marito. Così facendo, riesce a soddisfare i suoi bisogni principali - il piacere sessuale e l’ambizione - senza rinunciare al ruolo di moglie e madre voluto dalla società dell’epoca.
Come “Un pugno di polvere”, i punti di forza del romanzo sono i dialoghi brillanti, l’introspezione e la modernità dei temi trattati - tenendo conto che il libro è del 1963, è piuttosto rivoluzionario nel suo modo di descrivere l’intimità delle donne, incluso il loro bisogno di soddisfare i piaceri sessuali al pari degli uomini.
O’Hara si conferma un grande autore, erede di Fitzgerald e anticipatore di Yates, un autore che meriterebbe una fama decisamente maggiore.
May 27, 2017
Immediately after reading Bad Sex, I picked up the #5 bestseller of 1963 and found myself again reading about adultery. Also again this is a male author writing about an unfaithful woman. What a difference 52 years can make, but then again adultery is infinitely older than half a century. It is in the Ten Commandments!
This makes the sixth John O'Hara book I have read because that is how many top ten bestsellers he had between 1949 and 1963. I have deeply mixed feelings about his fiction because, though he creates fully rounded female characters, I usually feel like he is mansplaining women to me.
What he is always actually writing about is the white American class system of the eastern part of the country. Not a whiff of diversity can be found nor is he fully comfortable with self-willed, self-realizing women. The sex is all window dressing and probably had a lot to do with how well his books sold.
Elizabeth Appleton, nee Webster, met John Appleton at a party and fell in love with him on the tennis courts. She was raised in upper class New York City wealth and privilege but found the young men of her class uninspiring. So she married Professor John Appleton, descendant of a line of professors at an old, revered private college in rural Pennsylvania. When the small college town in which she found herself and John's lack of push for advancement became uninspiring, she entered into an affair with the town's most eccentric, but also upper class bachelor.
That affair, successfully concealed from John for some years, and their marriage are the story. It was entertaining and O'Hara's writing as smooth as ever. I just was not convinced of its truth.
As far as the intervening fifty-some years go, Elizabeth ends her affair and goes on to live contentedly with her husband while Brett just keeps circling the drain. Of course, Bad Sex was not anywhere near a bestseller but despite my dislike of that novel, it may be closer to the truth.
This makes the sixth John O'Hara book I have read because that is how many top ten bestsellers he had between 1949 and 1963. I have deeply mixed feelings about his fiction because, though he creates fully rounded female characters, I usually feel like he is mansplaining women to me.
What he is always actually writing about is the white American class system of the eastern part of the country. Not a whiff of diversity can be found nor is he fully comfortable with self-willed, self-realizing women. The sex is all window dressing and probably had a lot to do with how well his books sold.
Elizabeth Appleton, nee Webster, met John Appleton at a party and fell in love with him on the tennis courts. She was raised in upper class New York City wealth and privilege but found the young men of her class uninspiring. So she married Professor John Appleton, descendant of a line of professors at an old, revered private college in rural Pennsylvania. When the small college town in which she found herself and John's lack of push for advancement became uninspiring, she entered into an affair with the town's most eccentric, but also upper class bachelor.
That affair, successfully concealed from John for some years, and their marriage are the story. It was entertaining and O'Hara's writing as smooth as ever. I just was not convinced of its truth.
As far as the intervening fifty-some years go, Elizabeth ends her affair and goes on to live contentedly with her husband while Brett just keeps circling the drain. Of course, Bad Sex was not anywhere near a bestseller but despite my dislike of that novel, it may be closer to the truth.
January 25, 2013
ASIN B000NXI7EU - Elizabeth Appleton (nee Webster) is the wife of John, a rising star among the faculty at Spring Valley, a college in Spring Valley, Pennsylvania. Elizabeth comes from a wealthy family while John... John does not. She's just in love enough to give up a lot to be with her husband and he's more than enough in love to want to support her without her family's money. Elizabeth's sister, Jean, arrives for a visit and is caught up, by several characters, on the goings-on about the small college town. It is partly through those tellings, and where those stories naturally lead, that the reader gets taken back to the beginning of Elizabeth and John's courtship and brought all the way to the current day.
John is being considered for a promotion that would, for the most part, be the first important "win" of his life. Elizabeth, meanwhile, has conducted an on-again off-again affair that frees her to be more than someone's wife and that appeals to her intellectual side. Still, she knows that she's not going to be leaving her husband any time soon – unless, that is, he happened to have something of his own, some important "win" that would give him some esteem and self-esteem. Everything you'd expect from a romance novel set in a college town is here: politicking and back-stabbing, gossip and jealousy.
Not everyone is going to love this book. If you're a romance reader, especially of modern romances, you have a certain expectation of sex scenes that will not be met here. Here, for example, is the first sex scene between young Elizabeth and John:
'The moment had come and there was no more to say. He got up and sat beside her on the wicker sofa. He kissed her and they stretched out together. He put his knee between her legs and she caught her breath in the new excitement. Soon he had his unresisting hand wherever he wanted it to be, and she whispered to him, "I can't stop now. John, I can't stop. You have to do it, but be careful."
"We have to take a chance," he said.
"All right, all right we'll take a chance," she said. "Yes, let's take a chance. Oh, my darling. It is over for you?"
"Yes," he said.'
Seriously, that's it. Of course, the book was written in the early 1960s, long before steamy sex scenes became widely accepted. The setting of the 1950s-1960s works the other way, too. A reader in, say, their 40s, will actually have to pause to let this sink in: These characters are your parents' age. A reader in their 20s might have a really hard time thinking that these characters are their GRANDparents' age. The book, read now, certainly makes me look back at my family tree with a different notion of who those people were before I came along.
It's well-written, risqué for the time and, most of all, heartbreaking. Author John O'Hara makes it very tough to root for one particular winner, which keeps you in suspense because no matter how things turn out, whether or not John gets his "win," you know that someone is going to lose. It makes you want to read the last few pages the way you might watch a gruesome movie scene - with your hands over your face, peering cautiously out between your fingers.
- AnnaLovesBooks
John is being considered for a promotion that would, for the most part, be the first important "win" of his life. Elizabeth, meanwhile, has conducted an on-again off-again affair that frees her to be more than someone's wife and that appeals to her intellectual side. Still, she knows that she's not going to be leaving her husband any time soon – unless, that is, he happened to have something of his own, some important "win" that would give him some esteem and self-esteem. Everything you'd expect from a romance novel set in a college town is here: politicking and back-stabbing, gossip and jealousy.
Not everyone is going to love this book. If you're a romance reader, especially of modern romances, you have a certain expectation of sex scenes that will not be met here. Here, for example, is the first sex scene between young Elizabeth and John:
'The moment had come and there was no more to say. He got up and sat beside her on the wicker sofa. He kissed her and they stretched out together. He put his knee between her legs and she caught her breath in the new excitement. Soon he had his unresisting hand wherever he wanted it to be, and she whispered to him, "I can't stop now. John, I can't stop. You have to do it, but be careful."
"We have to take a chance," he said.
"All right, all right we'll take a chance," she said. "Yes, let's take a chance. Oh, my darling. It is over for you?"
"Yes," he said.'
Seriously, that's it. Of course, the book was written in the early 1960s, long before steamy sex scenes became widely accepted. The setting of the 1950s-1960s works the other way, too. A reader in, say, their 40s, will actually have to pause to let this sink in: These characters are your parents' age. A reader in their 20s might have a really hard time thinking that these characters are their GRANDparents' age. The book, read now, certainly makes me look back at my family tree with a different notion of who those people were before I came along.
It's well-written, risqué for the time and, most of all, heartbreaking. Author John O'Hara makes it very tough to root for one particular winner, which keeps you in suspense because no matter how things turn out, whether or not John gets his "win," you know that someone is going to lose. It makes you want to read the last few pages the way you might watch a gruesome movie scene - with your hands over your face, peering cautiously out between your fingers.
- AnnaLovesBooks
October 22, 2015
Elizabeth Appleton, first published in 1963, is one of John O'Hara's later novels, and it is a very good one, in my humble opinion. This is the story of a beautiful, strong-willed, independent woman, Elizabeth Appleton, the wife of college professor, John Appleton. This is the story of her largely successful marriage to John, and her relatively long-running affair with a man who loves her immensely. I know that you'll point out the dichotomy and ask, "How can she have a successful marriage, if she's having a long-term adulterous sexual relationship with another man?" Well, that is precisely the gist of this fascinating portrait of Elizabeth that O'Hara paints in the novel.
I have noticed that some readers think that O'Hara doesn't like women, or that he is misogynistic. Personally, I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. O'Hara likes women, and he very much likes to write about strong, independent women; women that have feelings and needs just like the men that they associate with, have sex with, and even marry. It is the breadth and scope of those relationships that O'Hara explores in most of his short stories and novels. These are very real people with very real feelings, and O'Hara is simply brilliant at bringing them to life on the page. Whether you agree with the decisions that the characters make or not, you will find yourself empathizing with them.
This book was also an experience in nostalgia for me, as I vividly recall the neighborhood cocktail parties that all of the husbands and wives in the small Montana town that I grew up in gave every Friday night. All of us kids would be running around playing while our parents got blasted on martinis, Manhattans, Scotch or bourbon on the rocks. I know that some of our parents fooled around outside of their marriages. Our parents were products of the Second World War, the Korean War, and then the Cold War; and they were all bound and determined to make life better for all of us 'Boomers.' My point is, Ohara's Elizabeth Appleton could just as easily have been one of the mothers of one of the kids I ran around with in those days.
Maybe I've said this before, but O'Hara's characters in his stories and novels are definitely not caricatures like what Dickens created. No, these are real people that each of us can easily understand and relate to; and, in that vein, O'Hara is the American Anthony Trollope--a recorder of real scenes of American life and real relationships in the early- and mid-20th century.
John O'Hara's Elizabeth Appleton gets 4 stars of 5 from me. I quite enjoyed it.
I have noticed that some readers think that O'Hara doesn't like women, or that he is misogynistic. Personally, I believe that nothing could be further from the truth. O'Hara likes women, and he very much likes to write about strong, independent women; women that have feelings and needs just like the men that they associate with, have sex with, and even marry. It is the breadth and scope of those relationships that O'Hara explores in most of his short stories and novels. These are very real people with very real feelings, and O'Hara is simply brilliant at bringing them to life on the page. Whether you agree with the decisions that the characters make or not, you will find yourself empathizing with them.
This book was also an experience in nostalgia for me, as I vividly recall the neighborhood cocktail parties that all of the husbands and wives in the small Montana town that I grew up in gave every Friday night. All of us kids would be running around playing while our parents got blasted on martinis, Manhattans, Scotch or bourbon on the rocks. I know that some of our parents fooled around outside of their marriages. Our parents were products of the Second World War, the Korean War, and then the Cold War; and they were all bound and determined to make life better for all of us 'Boomers.' My point is, Ohara's Elizabeth Appleton could just as easily have been one of the mothers of one of the kids I ran around with in those days.
Maybe I've said this before, but O'Hara's characters in his stories and novels are definitely not caricatures like what Dickens created. No, these are real people that each of us can easily understand and relate to; and, in that vein, O'Hara is the American Anthony Trollope--a recorder of real scenes of American life and real relationships in the early- and mid-20th century.
John O'Hara's Elizabeth Appleton gets 4 stars of 5 from me. I quite enjoyed it.
May 27, 2013
Another in my series of readings from 1963, this was by one of my favorite authors, John O’Hara. I don’t know what it is about O’Hara – maybe it’s his straight-forward story telling. This one didn’t have too many weird or unexpected twists, just a story about a marriage. It was interesting to read something written in 1963 but where the main story took place between 1940 and 1940. I still don’t think Mr. O’Hara liked women that much, but the main heroine here, while not a positive role model, was extremely strong. The frank discussion of sexuality also surprised me, especially from a main-stream author in 1963. This is the 6th book I’ve read from my birth year and I’m extremely surprised that every single thing I’ve read, even the children’s book and the Agatha Christie mystery, reference the cold war in one way or another. That’s probably the biggest incite I’ve had into 1963 thus far.
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June 21, 2025This was on the bookshelf in my house growing up and I picked it up, not knowing anything about it. I don’t remember it well but it was very adult and then it was mentioned again in the recent series about Julia child. Julia‘s editor., Julia Jones edited this and someone is reading it in one episode.
July 1, 2022
By my estimation, "Elizabeth Appleton" is a novel that is a little ahead of its time and a little behind, too. Written in 1963, O'Hara continues to explore the topic of human sexuality like he did in most of his other books. Given that sensibilities in 1963 were far more permissive than when he first began writing in the mid-30's, he's able to express most of the story without having to hide behind euphemisms nor worry about being censored. This book, which focuses on academic staff members in a small college town in Pennsylvania mostly in the 1940s and 1950, is a pre-cursor to the kind of unrestrained books John Updike and Philip Roth would later write. If O'Hara kicked open the door in the United States, the others carried forward with far more graphic - and complex - novels with similar themes.
At the center of the novel are the unhappily married Elizabeth and John Appleton. O'Hara's strength in this book is presenting the college dean and his wife as multi-dimensional characters with deep background. He explores how their mismatched upbringings brought them together as well as their goals and aspirations. As the lesser educated housewife Elizabeth grows very bored with John, she seeks an adulterous affair with one of the well-known bachelors in their town. O'Hara does an excellent job introducing the earliest glimmers of their lust and takes it to unexpected places. While I don't know if he was drawing from personal experience, one would guess that he was very familiar with the subject as he humanizes these characters.
At the center of the novel are the unhappily married Elizabeth and John Appleton. O'Hara's strength in this book is presenting the college dean and his wife as multi-dimensional characters with deep background. He explores how their mismatched upbringings brought them together as well as their goals and aspirations. As the lesser educated housewife Elizabeth grows very bored with John, she seeks an adulterous affair with one of the well-known bachelors in their town. O'Hara does an excellent job introducing the earliest glimmers of their lust and takes it to unexpected places. While I don't know if he was drawing from personal experience, one would guess that he was very familiar with the subject as he humanizes these characters.
December 10, 2020
john o'hara, like marlon brando is an acquired taste. i think you either like it or not. most of o'hara's stories take place in pa, with middle class folks in mid century -1940's-50's. elizabeth appleton is a story about adultery and it's aftermath. there are no twists here, it's straight forward. i have read all of his short stories, which are magnificent.
December 22, 2018
I really like this book and John O'Hara's writing. I picked this book because I saw it in bookshop while in Paris and because John O'Hara is from my hometown. Great book.
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June 26, 2019I have the german edition.
Want to read
November 16, 2017#5 1963
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