SMITH, Jane S. 1947-

(J. C. S. Smith)

PERSONAL: Born November 30, 1947, in New York, NY; daughter of Saul and Sylvia Schur; married Carl S. Smith; children: Jeremy, Lucia. Education: Simmons College, B.A., 1968; Yale University, Ph.D., 1974.

ADDRESSES: Home—Evanston, IL. Office—Department of History, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Agent—William Reiss, Paul R. Reynold, Inc., 71 W. 23rd St., New York, NY 10010. E-mail—j-smith5@nwu.edu.

CAREER: Educator, historian, and novelist. Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, assistant professor, Department of English, 1972–78, visiting scholar, Program on Women, 1979–86, visiting scholar, Institute for Policy Research, 1986–97, currently adjunct professor in the Department of History and visiting scholar at Institute for Health Services Research and Policy Studies. U.S. Postal Service, consultant, 1997–98; National Endowment for the Humanities, project evaluator, 1997–98.

MEMBER: American Historical Association (member of Herbert Feis Award committee, 1999), Authors Guild, Authors League, Society of Midwest Authors.

AWARDS, HONORS: National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, 1982, for Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style; Los Angeles Times Book Prize and Pulitzer Prize nomination, both 1990, both for Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine; Adult Fiction Award, Society of Midland Authors, 2000, for Fool's Gold.

WRITINGS:

(Under name J. C. S. Smith) Jacoby's First Case (mystery), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1980.

Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style (biography), Atheneum (New York, NY), 1982.

(Under name J. C. S. Smith) Nightcap: A Quentin Jacoby Mystery, Atheneum (New York, NY), 1984.

Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, W. Morrow (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Nina Gilden Seavey and Paul Wagner) A Paralyzing Fear: The Triumph over Polio in America, TV Books (New York, NY), 1998.

Fool's Gold (novel), Zoland Books (Cambridge, MA), 2000.

SIDELIGHTS: Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Jane S. Smith's 1982 biography Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style examines the life of Elsie de Wolfe, a socialite who greatly influenced taste and design from the late 1880s until her death in 1950. Originally an actress best known for her stunning attire, de Wolfe invented the profession of interior decorating in 1905, winning worldwide recognition and attracting millionaire clients; she later became famous for her elegant, extravagant parties on both sides of the Atlantic. De Wolfe "had the cultivated eye for discovering, creating or promoting what is intrinsically beautiful or interesting, whether for the moment or the ages," explained Charlotte Curtis in the New York Times Book Review, "and the canny ability to know when it [was] time for a change." "Some people raise the pursuit of superficial pleasures to an art and some turn it to a profit," Smith explains in her study. "Elsie … managed to do both."

Critical opinion differed on the importance of de Wolfe's life and the author's treatment of it. "Smith attempts to inject a little significance and earnestness into her talented, high-spirited, childish, and calculating heroine," remarked a New Yorker writer, who added that de Wolfe's "life is a lesson in getting away not with murder but with narcissism." Writing in a Los Angeles Times Book Review critique, Susan Martin stated that "Smith's heavy-handed, respectful approach is inappropriate to this fluffy subject." Yet other reviewers commended the author's careful, scholarly methods and reacted positively to Smith's trend-setting subject. Writing in the Washington Post Book World, critic Mina Curtiss admired "the author's combination of empathy and detachment" and noted that "perhaps in spite of the emphasis on conspicuous display, high life, and elegance, there is in this scholarly but never academic biography a lesson in tactics for the National Organization for Women" in the way de Wolfe achieved unconventional professional and personal success "with no sexist chip on [her] shoulder." And Curtis wrote in the New York Times Book Review that "Smith has turned the de Wolfe story … into serious and sometimes even brilliant social history…. [De Wolfe's life is] absorbing, informative, rich in esthetic detail." Added Curtis, Smith's biography is "especially revealing now, in an era when writing about interior design, fashion and the pursuit of transient beauty consists mostly of selling, cataloguing or advising without benefit of apparent reflection, let alone wit or understatement."

A visiting scholar at Northwestern University's Institute for Health Services research and Policy Studies, Smith has also written two books about poliomyelitis, or polio, a disease that had reached epidemic proportions by the early 1950s. In Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine she provides a thoroughly researched account detailing Jonas Salk's development of the famous vaccine that put a halt to a disease that primarily affected children. The book includes the medical, social, cultural, psychological, and political aspects involved in the vaccine's development. While unconvinced by some of Smith's conclusions, a Publishers Weekly reviewer described Patenting the Sun as an "exciting, dramatic narrative [that] tells a comprehensive story of the conquest of polio and sheds fresh light on the politics of medicine." Science contributor Pauline M. H. Mazumdar similarly called the book "dramatic, suspenseful, exciting, sad, touching, and detailed," and added that "Smith's style is colorful, even perhaps, quite appropriately in the circumstances, popular, but her research outdoes the most meticulous Ph.D. thesis." Smith also co-wrote A Paralyzing Fear: The Triumph over Polio in America with Nina Gilden Seavey and Paul Wagner. The book includes stories told by polio survivors and the medical professionals who treated them and searched for a cure.

Writing under J. C. S. Smith, the author has also produced two suspense novels whose protagonist is a retired New York City transit cop named Quentin Jacoby. In Jacoby's First Case the bored retiree agrees to look for a young female prostitute who has disappeared; his search leads him into a world of race fixing, drugs, prostitution, illegal abortion, and murder. Writing in the New Republic, Robin Winks observed that "the sense of place and the grace of style lift this 'first mystery' above its plotting." Jean M. White, reviewing the novel for the Washington Post Book World, stated that while "the story itself is conventional … Jacoby is an easy-going, likeable chap" and his adventures make "a nifty, entertaining novel." And in the New York Times Book Review Evan Hunter concluded that, despite obvious manipulation by the author and heavy reliance on "Coincidence and Convenience, those deadly twin-sister poisoners of good suspense," Smith's hero is "a nice enough fellow and difficult to dislike."

In Jacoby's second adventure, Nightcap, the ex-transit cop takes a position as a night watchman at a fancy New York restaurant. He becomes one of three suspects when the eatery's owner is murdered, and must serve as sleuth once again and solve the case to prove his innocence. In the Washington Post Book World White again commended Smith's ability to convey the "distinctive … character and flavor" of both her protagonist and her New York City setting. "If there is little tension or surprise in the plotting, Smith more than compensates for this with the likable Jacoby, a breezy narrator, and her sense of place, rich in the sights, sounds, and smells of Manhattan from the Battery to the Bronx," the reviewer elaborated. New York Times Book Review critic Newgate Callendar enjoyed Smith's "well-written" mystery, concluding that Nightcap "is a fine, relaxed book with a sort of Everyman for a hero, and it should attract many admirers."

Smith's third foray into fiction is a comedy titled Fool's Gold. Published in 2000, the novel focuses on an American family whose members decide to go to sunny Provence in France, only to find that it is not exactly the idyllic retreat they imagined, but rather a commercialized, overcrowded tourist center. Vivian and Richard Hart have inflated egos and artistic ambitions as a writer and photographer, respectively. Their children, Justin and Lilly, find the summer jaunt to France boring until they find a hidden cache of Celtic gold that they sell. The gold soon turns up in flea markets and sets off gold fever among a wide variety of characters. Writing in Booklist, Donna Seaman noted that Smith "brings her passion for history" to Fool's Gold, and dubbed the novel "a smart and hilarious send-up of cultural pretension in general and France's carefully fashioned mystique in particular." In a review for Book, Amy Timberlake commented, "Beware of reading this book in public—Smith is laugh-out-loud funny."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Book, May-June, 2000, Amy Timberlake, review of Fool's Gold, p. 80.

Booklist, May 1, 1990, review of Patenting the Sun: Polio and the Salk Vaccine, p. 1677; April 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Fool's Gold, p. 1526.

Chicago Tribune Book World, June 8, 1980.

Choice, January, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 811.

Journal of American History, June, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 389.

Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 1990, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 564.

Library Journal, March 1, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 62; April 1, 2000, Nancy Pearl, review of Fool's Gold, p. 164; April 15, 2000, Wilda Williams, review of Fool's Gold, p. 125.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 18, 1982, Susan Martin, review of Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style; June 16, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 10.

Ms., June, 1982.

New Republic, June 28, 1980, Robin Winks, review of Jacoby's First Case.

Newsweek, July 12, 1982.

New Yorker, June 14, 1982; review of Elsie de Wolfe.

New York Times Book Review, July 20, 1980, Evan Hunter, review of Jacoby's First Case; June 20, 1982, Charlotte Curtis, review of Elsie de Wolfe; October 28, 1984, Newgate Callendar, review of Nightcap; June 16, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 28; February 28, 1999, review of A Paralyzing Fear: The Triumph over Polio in America, p. 16; August 27, 2000, Liam Callanan, review of Fool's Gold, p. 18.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1990, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 107; May 31, 1991, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 70; March 20, 2000, review of Fool's Gold, p. 71.

Science, November 9, 1990, Pauline M. H. Mazumdar, review of Patenting the Sun, p. 840.

Washington Post Book World, June 15, 1980, Jean M. White, review of Jacoby's First Case; July 4, 1982, Mina Curtiss, review of Elsie de Wolfe; July 15, 1984, Jean M. White, review of Nightcap.

ONLINE

Northwestern University Web site, http://www.northwestern.edu/ (February 16, 2004), "Jane S. Smith."