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Sara Mayfield (September 10, 1905 – January 15, 1979) was an American writer, journalist, and inventor. Her writing included plays, novels, short stories, and newspaper articles.

Early life and education

Mayfield spent her early life in Montgomery, Alabama where her childhood acquaintances included Tallulah Bankhead, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Sara Haardt.

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. After a lengthy courtship, Menken and Haardt married on August 27, 1930, in Baltimore.

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.

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.

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. Zelda Fitzgerald had perished two weeks earlier on March 10 at Highland Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina. Mayfield was released from Bryce on February 25, 1965.

References

1. Staff writer (January 15, 1979). "Sara Mayfield, Wrote Biography of Mencken". New York Times. No. Jan. 15, 1979. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
2. "Sara Mayfield papers (MSS.0935)". Guides.lib.ua.edu. University of Alabama. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
3. Horne, Jennifer (January 15, 2024). Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. pp. 2–4. ISBN 9780817321369.
4. Mayfield, Sara (April 25, 1965). "Days of Grace". Menkeniana. Fall 1965 (15): 8–9. JSTOR 26482649. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
5. Mayfield, Sara (1968). The Constant Circle: H.L. Menken and His Friends. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama. pp. 168–169. ISBN 9780817350635. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
6. "MAYFIELD, SARA, 1905-1979". Alabama Authors. The University of Alabama Libraries. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
7. Horne 2024, p. 120.
8. Horne 2024, p. 123.
9. Smith, Anne Chesky. "Inside the 1948 Highland Hospital fire that killed Zelda Fitzgerald". Citizen Times. No. December 4, 2022. USA Today Network. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
10. Horne 2024, p. 191.

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• 1905 births
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• 20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American women writers
• Writers from Alabama
• Writers from Montgomery, Alabama
• American writers with disabilities