Tracy Chevalier

1962

Tracy Chevalier is an American-British novelist best known for historical fiction that places imagined lives within carefully researched settings. Born in Washington, D.C., in 1962, she moved to Britain in the 1980s and later studied creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her novels often focus on artists, craftspeople and women whose experiences are only briefly recorded, or entirely absent, from conventional historical accounts.

She achieved international success with Girl with a Pearl Earring, inspired by Johannes Vermeer’s painting of the same name and set in seventeenth-century Delft. Her other novels include Falling Angels, The Lady and the Unicorn, Remarkable Creatures, The Last Runaway and At the Edge of the Orchard. Chevalier’s work is noted for its restrained prose, strong sense of place and close attention to domestic life, social convention and the creative process.

Periods and events

Napoleonic Era Medieval Period Late Medieval Medieval Italy Medieval Venice World War I World War II Renaissance & Early Modern Europe Italian Wars Age of Exploration World War I & Interwar Era Dutch Golden Age Interwar Period Great Depression