Grace Metalious (September 8, 1924 – February 25, 1964) was an American author known for her novel Peyton Place, one of the best selling works in publishing history.

In the summer of 1955, Leona Nevler, a freelance manuscript reader, read it for Lippincott and liked it, but knew it was too steamy for a major publisher to accept.

Messner immediately acquired the novel and asked Nevler to step in as a freelance editor for final polishing before publication.

[4] In the summer of 1956, the Metalious family moved into a new hilltop house, and a publicity campaign was launched for the book, published on September 24, 1956.

The village of Gilmanton Ironworks is where in December 1946, a daughter had murdered her sexually abusive father (upon which incident the book is partly based).

Hollywood lost no time in cashing in on the book's success—a year after its publication, the heavily sanitized movie Peyton Place was a major box-office hit.

Hours before her death, Metalious was convinced by her final lover, John Rees, to sign a will leaving him her entire estate, with the understanding that he would take care of her children.

Her family was able to invalidate the will, but to little avail, as her estate proved to be insolvent from years of lavish living, generosity to "friends", and embezzlement by an agent.

[6] In 1968, songwriter Tom T. Hall compared his fictional small town of Harper Valley, also a cauldron of scandal bubbling under the surface, to Peyton Place.

The celebration, which included lectures, readings of her work, and screenings of the 1957 film, marked the area's first public acknowledgment of its native daughter.