Beatrice Sparks

Beatrice Sparks, born Beatrice Ruby Mathews (January 15, 1917 – May 25, 2012) was an American writer and hoaxer who produced a series of books purporting to be the "real diaries" of troubled teenagers. The books deal with topical issues such as drug abuse, Satanism, teenage pregnancy, and AIDS, and are presented as cautionary tales. Her 1971 book Go Ask Alice (credited to "Anonymous") has sold nearly six million copies.

Although Sparks presented herself as merely the discoverer and editor of the diaries, records at the U.S. Copyright Office list her as the sole author for all but two of them. Later researchers have claimed that despite her claiming to be the editor of real teenagers diaries, she, in fact, invented the stories herself.

Biography

Early life

Beatrice Ruby Mathews was born in Goldburg, Custer County, Idaho and grew up in Logan, Utah. Leaving home at 17 to move to California, she married LaVorn Sparks in 1937. The couple started a family, having three children (one of whom died in infancy) and were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After some early financial struggles, LaVorn Sparks became wealthy having successfully speculated in Texas oil during WWII.

After WWII, the Sparks family lived a very comfortable existence for nearly twenty years in Los Angeles. Usually working as "Bee Sparks" (though sometimes using the pen-name "Susan LaVorn"), aspiring writer Beatrice contributed to circulars distributed by local businesses and to church publications. In her self-written author bios of the period, she claimed variously to have studied at Utah State Agricultural College, or to have studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Utah.

In the early 1950's, she co-authored a play with Barbera called The Maid and the Martian, which ran in Los Angeles and was a moderate local success. (A pre-fame James Arness starred in one run of the play.) The play was eventually turned into the film Pajama Party in 1964, but after numerous changes to the idea and dialogue, Sparks' name was omitted from the film's credits.

Their kids having grown, Beatrice and LaVorn Sparks moved to a large mansion in Provo, Utah in 1964.

Beatrice Sparks had volunteered at a veteran's hospital in L.A., and continued her volunteer work at the Utah State Hospital in Provo. In later tellings by Sparks, she was a youth counselor at the hospital, as well as for a youth summer camp run on the campus of Brigham Young University -- this is where she alleges to have met the young woman who wrote the diaries that became Go Ask Alice. In fact, while it's possible she met a young woman there that was the inspiration for the book, her volunteer duties at the hospital and the summer camp were strictly administrative or organizational in nature, and did not include professional counseling.

Go Ask Alice (1971)

Sparks claimed that her experiences working with troubled adolescents made her want to produce cautionary tales that would keep other teens from falling into the same traps. Her first book, Go Ask Alice, was presented by Sparks to a publisher as a diary that had been given to her by a young girl who subsequently died. Though Sparks received the book's author royalties, it was published under the byline "Anonymous" in 1971 at her agent's and publisher's insistence, as the publisher felt that by presenting the diary as the work of anonymous teen, the book would connect more strongly with the intended teen audience.. The book was presented as the diary of an unnamed teenage girl who became involved in drugs and underage sex, vowed to clean up, but then died from an overdose a few weeks after her final diary entry.

When Go Ask Alice became a bestseller with several million copies sold, Sparks received substantial royalties, but as an aspiring author she was frustrated that her name was not on the book. In interviews conducted over the next few years, Sparks identified herself as the book's editor and claimed that it consisted partly of the actual diary of a troubled teen, and partly of embellished events based on Sparks's experiences working with other teens. Sparks was unable to produce the original diary for critics, and investigator Alleen Pace Nelson publicly questioned the book's veracity and verifiability. Later editions of the book contained the standard disclaimer: "This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, places, characters, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental."

Voices (1978) and Jay's Journal (1979)

In 1978, Sparks issued a second book, called Voices, which was alleged to contain transcripts of interviews with four troubled teens. No proof was made available that the four youths existed, and contemporary reviews noted that all four interview subjects sounded very much alike, with the School Library Journal noting "the teenagers are not believable, they seem merely vehicles for Sparks' theorizing." Voices was widely panned, and was a commercial failure.