In 1956, Grace Metalious’s first novel “Peyton Place” was published. Within two weeks it sold, 60,000 hardcover copies. Eventually it sold more than 12 million copies in paperback. Denounced as being “near pornography,” “Peyton Place” was the story of a small New England town. Metalious wrote about both sides of the tracks: those who lived on the hill and those who lived in the poor shantytown.
Metalious was a hard-drinking, hard-living woman who died before she was forty. I can remember the photography of her on the back cover. She was dressed in a plaid jacket, jeans, smoking a cigarette staring at her typewriter. Her book reflected her view of life, warts and all. Her characters, rich and poor alike, were guilty of all manner of sordid behavior: murder, violence, rape, incest, abortion and more.
Even though it was considered lurid in 1956, it doesn’t come anywhere near novels like “Sixty Shades of Gray.” I probably read it when I was in college because it was the “sensational book” of the time. I do remember it as being well written. The book was made into a fairly good movie and then into a television series that focused on the lives of the young people of Peyton Place.
In 1999, Northeastern University Press reissued it. It remains in print today.