Clare Jaynes was a combined pseudonym of co-writers Jane Mayer and Clara Spiegel.
[1] Together the two women wrote, and are most well known for Instruct My Sorrows, a novel used as the basis of the film My Reputation starring Barbara Stanwyck.
Clare Spiegel and Jane Mayer began their collaboration in 1940, writing short stories that were published in magazines such as The New Yorker and Mademoiselle.
In 1953, the Wilson Library Bulletin described the two women as:brown-haired, brown-eyed; she is five feet three inches tall, and is of German-American ancestry.
Jane married David Mayer whom she met on a visit to Chicago in 1927 after being introduced to him by Clare Spiegel.
[4] Clara Elizabeth Gatzert was born on December 6, 1904, in her parents house at 4915 Washington Park Court on the south side of Chicago.
She attended the Faulkner School for Girls, and Vassar College, where she met Jane Mayer.
She died in Wood River Medical Center in Sun Valley, Idaho on Monday, October 20, 1997, at the age of 92.