Literary Precedents for The Carpetbaggers

The Carpetbaggers Literary Precedents

The roman a clef was introduced to a wide audience in the novels of Benjamin Disraeli during the Victorian period. W. Somerset Maugham, Evelyn Waugh, and Ernest Hemingway have written in this mode, but it has become a particular vogue during the last few decades, in part at least because of the success of The Carpetbaggers. Other Robbins novels including major characters who are transparently derived from real people include Where Love Has Gone (1962, Lana Turner), The Adventurers (1966, Porfirio Rubirosa and Barbara Hutton), The Pirate (1974, a conflation of Adnan Khashoggi and Abdlatif al-Hamad), The Lonely Lady (1976, Jacqueline Susann), Dreams Die First (1977, Hugh Hefner), and Spellbinder (1982, Billy Graham).