Roman à clef

Key to vol. 2 of Delarivier Manley's, New Atalantis (1709).

A roman à clef or roman à clé (French for "novel with a key", French pronunciation: /ʁɔ.mɑ̃n a kle/ ), also known as faction, is a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction. "Key" in this context means a table one can use to swap out the names, see figure.

The reasons an author might choose the roman à clef format include:

• Satire
• Writing about controversial topics and/or reporting inside information on scandals without giving rise to charges of libel
• The opportunity to turn the tale the way the author would like it to have gone
• The opportunity to portray personal, autobiographical experiences without having to expose the author as the subject
• Avoiding self-incrimination or incrimination of others that could be used as evidence in civil, criminal, or disciplinary proceedings

Biographically inspired works have also appeared in other literary genres and art forms, notably the film à clef.

Notable romans à clef

Fiction

• The novels of 17th century French writer Madeleine de Scudéry (1607-1701).
• Glenarvon (1816) by Lady Caroline Lamb which chronicles her affair with Lord Byron (thinly disguised as the title character).
• Virtually all of the novels of Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866) presuppose a knowledge of English intellectuals and currents of thought of the time.
• The Blithedale Romance (1852) by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a fictional account inspired by, but not specifically depicting, Hawthorne's experiences at the Brook Farm experiment.
• Ruth Hall (1854) by Fanny Fern (Sarah Payson Willis) describes Fern's own struggle to become a successful newspaper columnist, and puts her family (including her brother, Nathaniel Parker Willis) and two of her early editors in a most unflattering light.
• The Lady of Aroostook (1879) by William Dean Howells depicts Emily Dickinson's romantic engagements with several men.
• Röda rummet (The Red Room) (1879) by August Strindberg presents thinly disguised depictions of intellectuals of the period.
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde in which the three main characters are coded homosexual men.
• The Green Carnation (1894) by Robert Hichens is based on the relationship between Oscar Wilde and his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas.
• Buddenbrooks (1901) is a portrayal of Thomas Mann's family and of society in Luebeck.
• The protagonists of both Tonio Kröger (1903) and Death in Venice (1912) are representations of Thomas Mann.
• The Seething Pot (1905) by George A. Birmingham is based on the citizens of County Mayo.
• The Fiery Angel (1908) by Valery Bryusov depicts the real-life triangle of black magic, obsession and love between himself, Andrei Bely and Nina Petrovskaya while describing a story of witchcraft in 16th Century Germany.
• Ann Veronica (1909) by H. G. Wells is based in the real relationship between H. G. Wells and Amber Reeves.
• The Moon and Sixpence (1919) by William Somerset Maugham follows the life of Paul Gauguin, especially his time in Tahiti.
• Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923) and Those Barren Leaves (1925) by Aldous Huxley are all satires of contemporary events.
• The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway is a disguised account of Hemingway's literary life in Paris and his 1925 trip to Spain with several known personalities.
• The Benson Murder Case (1926), the best-selling first entry in the series of detective novels by S. S. Van Dine featuring detective Philo Vance, is based on the unsolved murder of bridge expert Joseph Elwell, who was found shot to death in a room locked from the inside, minus his toupee, physical circumstances which are duplicated in the novel.
• Point Counter Point (1928) by Aldous Huxley includes easily detected portraits of Huxley's friends D. H. Lawrence and John Middleton Murry.
• Roman à clef is one of the many dimensions of Orlando: A Biography (1928) by Virginia Woolf.
• All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) by Erich Maria Remarque is based on his experiences as a soldier during World War I.
• Look Homeward, Angel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe
• The Novels of Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957)
• Tender Is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald depicts acquaintances of Gerald and Sara Murphy in the 1920s.
• Mephisto (1936) by Klaus Mann. Mann's brother-in-law, the actor Gustaf Gründgens, was so offended by the main character Hendrik Höfgen (based on Gründgens himself) that the novel was banned after a libel case.
• Power Without Glory (1950) by Frank Hardy is an unveiled and highly critical account of the life of Australian business man and political figure John Wren (referred to by Hardy as John West). Hardy, a socialist, blamed Wren for what he saw as the corruption of the Australian Labor Party during the early 20th century. Hardy was sued for criminal libel for having depicted Wren's wife having an affair.
• In her novel Broderie Anglaise (1953), Violet Trefusis represents her lesbian affair with Vita Sackville-West and Vita's with Virginia Woolf in the form of a heterosexual romance. She also weaves the affairs of her mother, Alice Keppel, with Edward VII into the book.
• The novels of Jack Kerouac, including On the Road (1957) and The Dharma Bums (1958).
• The Ugly American (1958) by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, a book that criticized American foreign policy in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War; the book uses the fictional country of Sarkhan (a fictional country in Southeast Asia that closely resembles Burma, but is meant to allude to Vietnam) as the setting and includes several real people, most of whose names have been changed.
• The Idle Warriors (1962), Kerry Wendell Thornley's novel based on his old acquaintance from the Marine Corps, Lee Harvey Oswald.
• The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath, her semi-autobiographical novel, detailing a young girl's attempts at suicides and her mental breakdown.
• Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare's Love Life is a fictional biography of William Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess first published in 1964.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) by Hunter S. Thompson, a fictionalized account of Thompson's trip to Las Vegas in a drug-induced haze.
• A Scanner Darkly (1977) by Philip K. Dick, a fictionalized account of Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw."
• The Lords of Discipline (1980) by Pat Conroy, supposedly about the integration of the first black cadets into The Citadel. The accuracy of the events depicted within is vehemently denied by other alumni who attended at the time.
• Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (1981)
• Vasily Aksyonov's Say Cheese (1983) recounts in a fictionalized form the story of the Metropol anthology by Soviet writers, the first project of its kind not subject to censorship.
• Queenie (1985) by Michael Korda, nephew of Alexander Korda and the actress Merle Oberon. In the novel, Queenie Kelley, a girl of Indian and Irish descent, is based on Oberon, who went to great lengths to disguise her mixed-race background.
• Dominick Dunne's novels depict various upheavals in high society, with many thinly veiled prominent persons among the casts of characters. Among the novels and respective cases alluded to are The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (1985) (the shooting of Belair Stud owner William Woodward, Jr. by his wife, Ann Arden Woodward); An Inconvenient Woman (1990) (the Alfred S. Bloomingdale/Vicki Morgan affair and ensuing scandal); and A Season in Purgatory (1993) (the Michael Skakel/Martha Moxley murder case). Dunne's last work, "Too Much Money," published posthumously (2009), is a quasi-autobiographical thinly-veiled roman à clef. He became reticent to use real names after he was sued for defamation in the Chandra Levy matter. Interestingly, Dunne comes out of the closet through the protagonist in this book. It's sad that this graceful forthright gentleman had to keep this a secret.
• Postcards from the Edge (1987) by Carrie Fisher describes her substance abuse and often-strained relationship with her mother, Debbie Reynolds.
• Story of My Life (1988) by Jay McInerney implies that the cause of protagonist Alison Poole's "cocaine-addled, sexually voracious" behavior is her father's abuse, including the murder of her prize jumping horse. McInerney has stated in interviews that Poole was based on his former girlfriend, Lisa Druck, later known as Rielle Hunter.
• The Things They Carried (1990) by Tim O'Brien is considered a truthful if knowingly distorted account of O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam War and subsequent methods of coping with war's aftermath.
• Stephen Fry's The Liar (1991)
• Part 1 of PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story (1991) by Dr. Alexander and Ann Shulgin is a fictionalized autobiography of the couple (Part 2 is non-fiction).
• Primary Colors (1996) about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, published anonymously but later confirmed to have been written by Joe Klein.
• Part 1 of TiHKAL: The Continuation (1997) by Dr. Alexander and Ann Shulgin continues the fictionalized autobiography begun in PiHKAL (Part 2 is non-fiction).
• Ravelstein (2000) by Saul Bellow is a thinly disguised memoir of his friendship with Allan Bloom. His Humboldt's Gift (1975), is about his friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz.
• The Devil Wears Prada (2003) about a woman constantly bullied by her boss while working as an assistant at a fashion magazine. Although author Lauren Weisberger worked as an assistant at Vogue magazine, she denies that the book's antagonist, Miranda Priestly, is modeled after the magazine's editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.
• 2666 (2004) by Roberto Bolaño, which places the hundreds of real rape/murders in Juárez, Mexico in a fictional border-town in the State of Sonora (west of Juárez).
• Lunar Park (2005) by Bret Easton Ellis is partly a ghost story and an autobiographical novel describing his early years of fame and difficult relationship with his father.
• The Washingtonienne (2005) based on author Jessica Cutler's affairs with various men while a congressional intern in Washington, D.C.
• The Nanny Diaries (2002) and its film adaptation (2007), which satirise Upper Class Manhattan. Written by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus; two former nannies who worked in Manhattan.
• Nanny Returns (2009). The sequel to The Nanny Diaries.

Verse and drama

• The Rape of the Lock (1714) by Alexander Pope, inspired by a story recounted by his friend involving stolen hair.
• Le Roi s'amuse, by Victor Hugo
• Rigoletto
• Betrayal, by Harold Pinter, is closely based on his affair with Joan Bakewell
• Dreamgirls, a musical based on the career of The Supremes

See also

• Allegory
• Autobiographical novel
• Film à clef
• Literary technique
• Semi-fiction

References

• Amos, William (1985) The Originals: Who's Really Who in Fiction. London: Cape ISBN 0722110693
• Busby, Brian (2003) Character Parts: Who's Really Who in CanLit. Toronto: Knopf Canada ISBN 0676975798