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Historical person

Eleanor Roosevelt

born 1960

Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady of the United States from 1933 to 1945 and transformed the role through travel, journalism, public advocacy and direct political engagement. She supported labour rights, women’s participation and civil rights, although her positions developed over time and were sometimes constrained by the Roosevelt administration. After Franklin Roosevelt’s death she served at the United Nations and chaired the committee that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amy Bloom’s White Houses fictionalises Roosevelt’s relationship with journalist Lorena Hickok and presents public work alongside private emotional life. She also appears in novels about the Roosevelt presidency and the Second World War. Historical fiction must negotiate a vast documentary record of letters, columns and speeches, as well as continuing debate over how to interpret the intimate language of her correspondence with Hickok.

In Kate Quinn’s The Diamond Eye, her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt develops amid press scrutiny, political performance and a fictional threat designed to turn the celebrated soldier into a target. Jacqueline Winspear’s A Sunlit Weapon places Eleanor Roosevelt within a narrative shaped by military command and battlefield decision-making, family, marriage and personal loyalty, and court politics and dynastic power. Other novels featuring Eleanor Roosevelt include Gore Vidal’s The Golden Age and Gore Vidal’s Washington D C.

Historical context

Historical periods linked to Eleanor Roosevelt

World War II 1939–1945 CE

Series

Series featuring Eleanor Roosevelt (2 series)

Maisie Dobbs Series in Order

by Jacqueline Winspear 18 books 4.5

The Maisie Dobbs series follows a working-class London girl who becomes a nurse, psychologist and private investigator after education and service during the First World War. Beginning with her first independent case in 1929, the novels combine murder investigations with Maisie’s continuing effort to understand the physical and…

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Maisie Dobbs

4.4

Birds of a Feather

4.4

Pardonable Lies

4.5

Messenger of Truth

4.5

An Incomplete Revenge

4.6

Among the Mad

4.5

The Mapping of Love and Death

4.6

A Lesson in Secrets

4.4

Elegy for Eddie

4.5

Leaving Everything Most Loved

4.5

A Dangerous Place

4.3

Journey to Munich

4.5

In This Grave Hour

4.5

To Die but Once

4.7

The American Agent

4.7

The Consequences of Fear

4.6

A Sunlit Weapon

4.7

The Comfort of Ghosts

4.6

Narratives of Empire in Order

by Gore Vidal 5 books 4.3

Gore Vidal’s seven-volume Narratives of Empire sequence follows the United States from the revolutionary generation to the Cold War, combining the lives of the fictional Schuyler, Sanford and Day families with presidents, senators, journalists and political operators. The novels treat public history as a contest over power, reputation…

All books in this series