Title: Paula Fox Typescript (VMF056), 1984
Administrative/Biographical History
Paula Fox (April 22, 1923- ) is an American author of novels for adults and children and two memoirs. Born in New York, New York, Fox’s father, Paul Hervey Fox, wrote screenplays and was often drunk. Her Cuban-born mother, Elsie De Sola Fox, rejected her at birth and left her in a foundling home. Her maternal grandmother, temporarily visiting New York City, rescued her. Unable at the time to provide a home herself, the Cuban grandmother gave the infant to Reverend Elwood Corning (fondly called Uncle Elwood) and his bedridden mother in Balmville, New York. The Reverend treated Paula kindly, teaching her important things along the way. Fox first visited her parents at the age of five, when her mother treated her like a prisoner in war. The reunion was so traumatic, she wrote in her memoir Borrowed Finery, "I sensed that if she could have hidden the act she would have killed me."
A teenage marriage to Howard Bird produced a daughter, Linda, in 1944. However, given the tumultuous relationship with her own biological parents, she gave the child up for adoption. Fox later attended Columbia University, married the literary critic and translator Martin Greenberg, had two sons, and worked for years as a teacher and as a tutor for troubled children. Only in her 40s did she begin her first novel, Poor George, about a cynical school teacher who finds purpose—and ruin—in mentoring a vagrant teenager. Fox won multiple awards for her children's books, including the 1974 Newbery Medal for her novel The Slave Dancer.
