Sara Mayfield

{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2023}} {{Infobox writer |name = Sara Mayfield |image = |birth_name = Sara Martin Mayfield |birth_date = {{birth date |1905|9|10 |mf=y}} |birth_place = Montgomery, Alabama, US |death_date = {{death date and age |1979|1|10 |1905|9|10}} |death_place = Tuscaloosa, Alabama, US | education = {{unbulleted list | Goucher College | University of London | Sorbonne University | University of Alabama }}

|occupation = author, journalist, inventor |genre = Biography |notableworks = {{ubl |''The Constant Circle: H.L. Menken and His Friends'' |''Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald'' |''Mona Lisa, the Woman in the Portrait; a Fictional Biography'' }} }}

'''Sara Mayfield''' (September 10, 1905{{snd}}January 15, 1979) was an American writer, journalist, and inventor.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Staff writer |title=Sara Mayfield, Wrote Biography of Mencken |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1979/01/15/archives/sara-mayfield-wrote-biography-of-mencken.html |access-date=2 December 2023 |work=New York Times |date=January 15, 1979 |issue=Jan. 15, 1979}}</ref> Her writing included plays, novels, short stories, and newspaper articles.<ref>{{cite web |title=Sara Mayfield papers (MSS.0935) |url=https://guides.lib.ua.edu/c.php?g=39549&p=2365992 |website=Guides.lib.ua.edu |publisher=University of Alabama |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref>

==Early life and education== Mayfield spent her early life in Montgomery, Alabama where her childhood acquaintances included Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Sara Haardt.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Horne |first1=Jennifer |title=Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author |date=January 15, 2024 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |location=Tuscaloosa, Alabama |isbn=9780817321369 |pages=2–4 |url=https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817361365/odyssey-of-a-wandering-mind/}}</ref>

Mayfield attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. While there, she won a short-story prize in 1924, which brought her into contact with the journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken. Menken invited Mayfield to supper at Baltimore's Schellhase Palazzo restaurant. As a chaperone, she took her friend Haardt.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mayfield |first1=Sara |title=Days of Grace |journal=Menkeniana |date=April 25, 1965 |volume=Fall 1965 |issue=15 |pages=8–9 |jstor=26482649 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/26482649 |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref> After a lengthy courtship, Menken and Haardt married on August 27, 1930, in Baltimore.<ref>{{cite book |last=Mayfield |first=Sara |title=The Constant Circle: H.L. Menken and His Friends |date=1968 |publisher=University of Alabama |location=Tuscaloosa, Alabama |pages=168–169 |isbn=9780817350635 |url=https://www.uapress.ua.edu/9780817350635/the-constant-circle/ |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref>

==Writing== Mayfield penned three book-length works: ''The Constant Circle: H.L. Mencken and His Friends''; ''Exiles from Paradise: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald''; and ''Mona Lisa, the Woman in the Portrait: a Fictional Biography'' in addition to numerous articles for the Baltimore Sun, the Paris Herald, the New York Herald Tribune, Transradio Press, and the Birmingham News. She worked as an assistant editor at the University of Alabama Press from 1967 to 1969.<ref>{{cite web |title=MAYFIELD, SARA, 1905-1979 |url=https://www.lib.ua.edu/Alabama_Authors/?p=1696 |website=Alabama Authors |publisher=The University of Alabama Libraries |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref>

==Inventions== In 1946, Mayfield experimented with byproducts from cotton productions. She devised a method for combining waste cellulose with water, which caused the material to harden into a durable material with marketable applications. She called the material Plasticast and incorporated a business called Southern Cellulose Corporation to develop the material's potential.<ref>Horne 2024, p. 120.</ref>

==Confinement== Following what she considered erratic behavior, Susie Mayfield, Mayfield's mother, had her daughter taken from their home, Idlewyld, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and confined to Bryce Hospital on March 23, 1948.<ref>Horne 2024, p. 123.</ref> Zelda Fitzgerald had perished two weeks earlier on March 10 at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Smith |first1=Anne Chesky |title=Inside the 1948 Highland Hospital fire that killed Zelda Fitzgerald |url=https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2022/12/04/wnc-history-1948-highland-hospital-fire-killed-zelda-fitzgerald/69680159007/ |access-date=2 December 2023 |work=Citizen Times |issue=December 4, 2022 |publisher=USA Today Network}}</ref> Mayfield was released from Bryce on February 25, 1965.<ref>Horne 2024, p. 191.</ref>

==References== {{Reflist|25em}}

==External links== {{University of Alabama|state=collapsed}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayfield, Sara}} Category:1905 births Category:1979 deaths Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights Category:20th-century American women writers Category:Writers from Montgomery, Alabama Category:American writers with disabilities