Carolyn Gold Heilbrun

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Carolyn Gold Heilbrun (born January 13, 1926 in East Orange, New Jersey; died October 9, 2003) was an American academic and feminist author who also wrote mystery novels under the pen name of Amanda Cross.

Heilbrun graduated from Wellesley College in 1947, and attended graduate school in English literature at Columbia University, receiving her M.A. in 1951 and Ph.D in 1959. She taught English at Columbia from 1960 to 1993. Heilbrun was the first woman to receive tenure in the English department. Her academic specialty was British modern literature, with a particular interest in the Bloomsbury group.

She married James Heilbrun during World War II, and they had three children.

She was the author of fourteen Kate Fansler mysteries, written under the name Amanda Cross. Fansler, like Heilbrun, was an English professor. Heilbrun kept her second career as a mystery novelist secret in order to protect her academic career, until a fan discovered "Amanda Cross"'s true identity through copyright records. The novels, all set in academia, often were an outlet for Heilbrun's view on feminism, academic politics, and other political issues. Death in a Tenured Position (set at Harvard University) was particularly harsh in its criticism of the academic establishment's treatment of women.

Heilbrun committed suicide at her apartment in New York City. According to her son, she was not ill, but felt that her life had been completed.

[edit] Bibliography

Below is a list of Kate Fansler mysteries:

• In The Last Analysis (1964)
• The James Joyce Murder (1967)
• Poetic Justice (1970)
• The Theban Mysteries (1972)
• The Question of Max (1976)
• Death in a Tenured Position (1981, Nero Wolfe Award winner)
• Sweet Death, Kind Death (1984)
• No Word From Winifred (1984)
• A Trap for Fools (1989)
• The Players Come Again (1990)
• An Imperfect Spy (1995)
• The Puzzled Heart (1998)
• Honest Doubt (2000)
• The Edge of Doom (2002)

In addition to her mystery novels, Heilbrun was the author of 14 nonfiction books, including the feminist study Writing a Woman's Life (1988). These books include:

• The Garnett Family (1961)
• Toward a Recognition of Androgyny (1973)
• Lady Ottoline's Album (1976) (editor)
• Reinventing Womanhood (1979)
• The Representation of Women in Fiction (1983) (co-editor)
• Hamlet's Mother and Other Women (1990) (collection of essays)
• The Education of a Woman: The Life of Gloria Steinem (1995)
• The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty (1997) ISBN 0-345-42295-3