维拉·卡斯帕利

维拉·露易丝·卡斯帕里（Vera Louise Caspary 1899年11月13日—1987年6月13日）是一名美国作家，成名作是被改编为电影的《罗娜秘记》。其作品的特点是女主人公多具备相当的独立自主性。

她收入并不高，大萧条期间对社会主义产生兴趣，因此加入美国共产党，为其组织活动和筹集资金。她曾前往苏联追寻信仰，但苏联的现实令她感到失望，回国后反而退党，但仍表示支持共产党。由于共产党背景，她被美国政府列入好莱坞黑名单，使得收入和工作都受到了较大影响。

生平

她出生于芝加哥，是一个早产儿。母亲茱莉亚生下她的时候已经40多岁。，她的父亲是一名百货商店采购员。两人分别为俄罗斯和德国犹太人。她的诞生对家人来说是一个惊喜，因此她从小就很受宠。

1917年，她高中毕业，进入一家商学院读书。1918年1月成为速记员，后来又干过各种零碎工作，最终决定成为作家，在家写小说为生。

Vera Louise Caspary (November 13, 1899 – June 13, 1987) was an American writer of novels, plays, screenplays, and short stories.

Her best-known novel, Laura, was made into a successful movie of the same title. Though generally classified as a mystery novelist, Caspary felt uncomfortable with classifying herself in the genre. Yet her novels effectively merged women's quest for identity and love with murder plots. Independence is the key to her protagonists, with her novels revolving around women who are menaced, but who turn out to be neither victimized nor rescued damsels.

Following her father's death in 1924, the income from Caspary's writing was at times barely sufficient to support herself and her mother, and during the Great Depression she became interested in socialist causes. Caspary joined the Communist Party under an alias, but not being totally committed and at odds with its code of secrecy, she claimed to have confined her activities to fund-raising and hosting meetings.

Caspary visited Russia in an attempt to confirm her beliefs, but became disillusioned and wished to resign from the Party, though she continued to contribute money and support similar causes. She eventually married Isidor "Igee" Goldsmith, her lover and writing collaborator of six years. However, despite their successful partnership, her Communist connections led to her being "graylisted", temporarily yet significantly affecting their offers of work and income. The couple split their time between Hollywood and Europe until Igee's 1964 death, after which Caspary remained in New York where she wrote eight more books.

Biography

Caspary was born prematurely in Chicago – her mother, Julia (née Cohen), over 40 with three nearly-grown children, had hidden the pregnancy. Her father Paul was a buyer for a department store. Caspary's parents were second-generation immigrants of German-Jewish and Russian-Jewish heritage. Being so much younger than her siblings, Caspary was reportedly spoiled as a child.

After Caspary graduated high school in 1917, her father enrolled her in a six-month course in a business college. By January 1918, Caspary found herself working as a stenographer. She went through a string of menial office jobs, looking for one where she could write instead of taking dictation from people with bad grammar.

While working at an ad agency composing copy, she invented the fictitious "Sergei Marinoff School of Classic Dancing", a mail-order dance course. Caspary wrote all the materials for this and other correspondence courses she had little knowledge of, including one that taught screenwriting. She was also producing articles for publications such as Finger Print Magazine, and the New York-based Dance Lovers Magazine. By 1922, she had turned down a raise from $50 to $75 to write from home and work on her first novel.

New York

By the time her father died in 1924, Caspary was fully supporting her mother, who was impressed that her daughter could "pound money out of a typewriter". Caspary moved to Greenwich Village in New York as Dance Lovers Magazine's new editor, living a Bohemian lifestyle. Here she met lifelong friend and collaborator Samuel Ornitz, then editor of Radio Lovers Magazine. Again leaving a job to write her own material, Caspary wrote her first novel, Ladies and Gents, which did not come out for two years due to a publisher's delay. When her mother fell ill, Caspary took another job writing a Charm and Beauty correspondence course.

While living in Greenwich Village, she was inspired to write The White Girl (January 1929) about a Southern black woman who moves North and passes as white. The reviews were better than Caspary had hoped; some speculated that it was written by a black woman who was passing.