The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo Study Guide

Taylor Jenkins Reid was born in Maryland in 1983. She graduated from Emerson College with a degree in media studies before moving to Los Angeles to work as a casting assistant. It was then that she realized her passion for writing, signed with a literary agent, and subsequently published her first novel, Forever, Interrupted in 2013. Since then, Reid has published eight novels, four of which make up what readers refer to as the “famous women quartet”—novels which focus on prominent fictional women and share a handful of recurring characters. Reid lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Reid’s creation of the character of Evelyn Hugo draws inspiration from a few different Old Hollywood figures, in particular Elizabeth Taylor, one of the biggest stars of the 1950s. Taylor was married eight times to seven different men. Another is Rita Hayworth, a 1940s star who, like the fictional Evelyn Hugo, changed her name and her hair color to conceal her Spanish heritage and appear whiter. Reid’s novel also focuses on the complexities of living as a famous LGBTQ+ person in the mid-20th century, a time during which being openly gay could jeopardize a person’s safety and career. The book also references the Stonewall riots of 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, events of which Reid’s characters are at the periphery but eminently aware. The Stonewall riots were a series of protests led by the gay community following a police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan. At the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, LGBTQ+ communities, whom the disease disproportionately affected, suffered stigmatization and became the subject of national hysteria.

Reid cites several biographies of Old Hollywood stars as inspiration for the character of Evelyn Hugo. Scandals of Classic Hollywood by Anne Helen Petersen discusses Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift’s friendship (Clift was gay, and the victim of a car accident, much like the novel’s Harry Cameron. Ava Gardner: The Secret Conversations is an exclusive set of tell-all interviews between Gardner and a ghostwriter; The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo echoes the book both in content and structure. Many of Reid’s other novels, including Daisy Jones & The Six and Carrie Soto is Back, focus on similar subjects of famous women with towering reputations and unwieldy ambition. Several bestselling contemporary novels by other authors also share a Hollywood setting, including The Work Wife by Alison B. Hart, which focuses on contemporary Hollywood and the impact of #MeToo allegations. while others share Reid’s historical interest such as City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert follows one woman’s romantic exploits, set against backdrop of the theater scene of 1940s New York.