Virginia Coffman

[sara]

Coffman had a high command of language; she understood the culture of the British Isles in the 19th Century; she had impeccable pitch for tone and atmosphere. And generally, her plots move along with the pleasing fluency of a good movie. (Bios of Coffman are hard to come by; I've read that she worked on scripts in Hollywood back in the day, but I can't find any references to her on IMDB.)

I’m a big fan of her writing too. I have a reference book published in the UK in the 1980’s which provides short biographies for many gothic and romance writers. It states Virginia Coffman worked as a publicity and fan-mail secretary in a variety of Hollywood studios in the 40’s & 50’s – including Monogram, Columbia and RKO Howard Hughes Studios - but there is no mention of script writing. Perhaps she worked on scripts but wasn’t credited or used a pseudonym?

The book also includes some wonderful quotes by her, including:

“Even a writer’s poorest work takes long agonising hours. One’s best work occasionally turns out to be a breeze. The work of romance writers certainly deserves as much respect as dead-blonde-in-the-alley novels and those repetitive, boring tales about children possessed of the devil, which have proliferated lately....

When I travel in Europe or the USA, or on shipboard, I am not too observant of people - so I’ll never be a great writer. But I feel that few writers can be observant as I when it comes to the atmosphere of places, streets, rooms, halls, alleys. I believe that the one special thing the reader will get out of my books is the atmosphere.

I am not ashamed of this. Some writers can’t even boast of one outstanding quality.”