Betty Smith, author of the best selling novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, an example of American working class literature

Biography of Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Publication of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the best selling novel by Betty Smith, published by Harper & Row in 1942 American literature

Literary context of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, within the context of working class American literature

Tomorrow Will Be Better, a novel by Betty Smith

Joy in the Morning, a novel by Betty Smith

Bibliography of the writing of Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Biography

This is the story of Betty Smith's life. It recounts her life growing up as a German immigrant in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, her first jobs, her marriage and children, her early writing career at Ann Arbor, her training as a playwright at Yale School of Drama, her move to North Carolina to be a part of the WPA Federal Theater Project, the years writing the novel, the overnight success, the stress of success and pressure to produce more novels, the films made from her novels, her Broadway Production, her later marriages and, finally, her declining years in her chosen home, Chapel Hill.

The sources are as accurate as possible, but there are many places where the autobiography inherent in her fiction is used as descriptions of her past. In this section of the website, I have not included footnotes. All of the material comes from letters, newspaper articles, interviews personal writings and unpublished manuscripts. There is also now a published biography, BETTY SMITH: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Valerie Raleigh Yow.

Enjoy the story.