Gossip Girl is an American young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar and published by Little, Brown and Company, a subsidiary of the Hachette Group. The series revolves around the lives and romances of the privileged socialite teenagers at the Constance Billard School for Girls, an elite private school in New York City's Upper East Side. The books primarily focus on best friends Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen, whose experiences are among those chronicled by the eponymous gossip blogger. The novel series is based on the author's experiences at Nightingale-Bamford School and on what she heard from friends.
Publication The first novel, Gossip Girl, was released in April 2002; the eleventh novel of the series was released in May 2007, with a prequel novel following in October 2007. Another follow-up novel, in which the characters return home from college for the holidays, was released in hardback format in November 2009. The original novel became the inspiration for the Gossip Girl teen drama television series, created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, which premiered on The CW on September 19, 2007. There are now 13 novels.
In May 2008, a follow-up series, Gossip Girl: The Carlyles, began publication, following the Carlyle triplets as they begin moving to the Upper East Side. As of October 2009, four novels have been released in this series. Ziegesar created a spin-off series, The It Girl, which began publication in 2005, and Yen Press has adapted the series into a manga series titled Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only.
History The novel that started the series, Gossip Girl, was published in paperback format in April 2002. Two new novels were released annually until the final novel, Don't You Forget About Me, was released in May 2007, showing the main characters graduating from high school and moving on to college and other pursuits. A prequel novel, It Had To Be You, was released in October 2007 in hardcover and electronic book format. It detailed the events that occurred a year before the first novel. A box set containing the eleven novels of the series and the prequel novel, in paperback format, was released November 1, 2009. Two days later, a sequel novel, I Will Always Love You was released. The hardcover book tells the story of the main characters returning home from college for the holidays. Hachette Group re-released all of the original novels in electronic book format between 2008 and 2009.
Books nine, ten and eleven of the main series were ghostwritten.
In December 2009, Yen Press announced that it was working with Korean artist Hyekyung Baek to create a manga adaptation of the series titled Gossip Girl: For Your Eyes Only. Rather than adapting the original novels, however, the graphic novels feature original stories with the same characters. It was serialized in the company's anthology magazine Yen Plus, from August 2010 to December 2013.
In October 2011, a parody of the series Gossip Girl: Psycho Killer written by von Ziegesar was released.
Unlike the show, Gossip Girl's identity in the books is not known. Von Ziegesar said of the character, "She was the omniscient narrator. Gossip Girl was me".
Cecily morphed the real-life high school named Nightingale-Bamford into Constance Billard, and also derived St. Jude from The Allen-Stevenson School.
Characters from the first series of books Blair Waldorf – In the novel series, Blair Cornelia Waldorf is a pretty, perfectionist, hard-working young woman with a compulsive personality and eating disorders. Ambitious and determined, she is willing to do anything to succeed and refuses to back down from any obstacle life places in her path. However, being very impulsive, she often acts out of anger or sorrow, leading her to commit numerous rash actions that she must then undo. Her tendency to overachieve can lead to feelings of paranoia, with dramatic or comical results.
Blair cares little about what others think of her, she lets everyone know what she has in mind and worries only about her future. She's also fiercely competitive. Domineering and authoritarian, she likes those around her to behave exactly as she expects and becomes irritable when they don't. She uses her charm, money and social clout to get what she wants and her father, in fact, raised her under the impression that she deserved everything she wishes. Although rather self-centered, she can at times show great empathy, especially toward those younger than herself. Resolutely romantic and idealistic by nature, she frequently imagines her life as a fairy tale. Though somewhat snobbish and haughty, Blair remains one of the most popular girls on the Upper East Side and has her own entourage around her.
A fashion enthusiast, she always wears the best shoes in the series and, being very athletic, is also tremendously talented at tennis, a discipline in which she is highly ranked at the national level. Blair is the eldest daughter of the extremely wealthy Harold J. Waldorf III, a renowned business attorney, and Eleanor Wheaton Waldorf, a Scottish Protestant socialite— and has a younger brother, Tyler Hugh Waldorf, six years her junior. Her pet is a small Russian Blue cat named Kitty Minky.
Blair's parents divorce when her father was caught cheating on her mother with his 21 year old secretary. His homosexuality being finally revealed, Harold decides to flee the scandal by settling permanently in the south of France with his young lover. After this painful separation, Eleanor meets Cyrus Rose, a Jewish real estate developer, and marries him shortly after. Blair thus acquires an anarchist, pacifist, vegan stepbrother, Aaron Rose, whom she initially cannot stand but who eventually earns her respect. This new union also brings the birth of Blair, Tyler and Aaron's half-sister, little Yale Rose, named by Blair in tribute to her dream university. At the beginning of the saga, Blair is a student at Constance Billard School for Girls, where she is the top student in her class, and her entire life revolves around her obsession with getting into Yale alongside her boyfriend, Nathaniel “Nate” Archibald - with whom she constantly breaks up and reconciles — and finally turning their relationship into a shared life, perhaps even a marriage. In the early part of the book series, she is also fixated on the idea of losing her virginity to him.
Blair idolizes actress Audrey Hepburn so intensely that she tries to live her life the way she imagines her idol would. She often turns various adventures into scenarios she plays out as though she were starring in the movie of her own life. Although beautiful and more than wealthy, Blair is constantly plagued by doubts and her life is far less perfect than she wishes.
Despite her excellent academic performance and numerous extracurricular activities (tennis, working in a soup kitchen one night a week, tutoring third graders in reading, taking fashion design course with Oscar de la Renta, chairing the Social Services Board, running the French Club, participating on the planning committee of every social function, doing charity work, presiding several youth organizations, etc.) she sees her college applications inexplicably rejected by most of the universities she applies to during her senior year, except for Georgetown, which immediately accepts her, and Yale, which at first places her — much to her dismay — on its waiting list.
Just as she is about to begin her higher education, her father — who has since remarried to a man named Giles — adopts two young Cambodian twins, Pierre and Pauline Waldorf (previously named Ping and Pong), thereby presenting Blair —desperate at the thought of no longer being the center of family attention — with two additional (half-)siblings.
After high school, Blair finally enters her dream university, Yale, where she studies political science for four years, hoping eventually to be admitted to law school. During her studies, her ambition even leads her to work on the campaign of a Connecticut senator. She also spent her junior year studying in England, at Saint Peter's College in the Oxford University where she crossed path again with Chuck and started a 12 months romance with him. Finally, in the fourth and final year of her undergraduate degree, she secures an internship at a prestigious New York litigation firm, MacMahon Cannon.
Blair has Serena Van der Woodsen as her childhood best friend and, though she loves her with all her heart, spends much of her time envying her. During her senior year, she also becomes the temporary roommate and friend of Vanessa Abrams and serves as a sort of mentor to Jenny Humphrey and Elise Wells.
Blair Cornelia Waldorf is described as average height (5'5"), slim and toned. She has long, dark chestnut, walnut-colored hair, cobalt-blue eyes, red lips, an aristocratic chin and a small fox-like face with delicate features. Her chest fills a B cup and she has a well-proportioned figure. She chopped her hair into a pixie cut in Because I'm Worth It, before having it extended in Don't You Forget About Me.
Serena van der Woodsen – angelic Serena Caroline van der Woodsen (Serena Celia VDW in the television adaptation) is the most beautiful, the richest, the coolest, the most popular and the wildest of the heroines. Her father, Mr. van der Woodsen (William in the television adaptation), runs the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather founded in the 18th century, and her mother, Lillian van der Woodsen, is a philanthropic art collector. Billionaires, her parents are on the boards of all major charities and art organizations in NY city. She also has an older brother, Erik (one or three years her senior : this detail is inconsistent in the novels), who attends Brown University. The van der Woodsens reside at 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-gloved doorman building directly across the street from The Met and Central Park. Her family owns half the top floor in a 14-room penthouse.
Serena attends Constance Billard, an elite private girls’ school, until the end of her sophomore year then is admitted to Hanover Academy, a very prestigious co-ed boarding school. She is eventually expelled a year later for taking the liberty of extending her summer vacation without the administration's approval. She returns to New York City, where her former school agrees to take her back for her senior year. She is not particularly academically skilled and she is often told that she is not meeting her full potential. This continually causes problems with her best friend, Blair Waldorf, as Serena is able to waltz her way easily through life while Blair has to work for things the blond beauty attains via her charm. A bit lazy, nonchalant and indecisive, she is nonetheless intelligent and perceptive and possesses numerous skills that help her obtain an excellent score on the SATs, which earns her admission to several of the most prestigious colleges in the country (like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Brown, etc.) However, she never fully realizes the extent of her potential and sometimes loses her way in life, unable to set boundaries or commit to real effort in pursuit of ambitious goals.
Serena is kind and compassionate, a good-hearted person who wants only the best for others but she is also somewhat immature and fairly unstable. She gets bored easily and is always looking for a good time. Every hetero-/bi-/pansexual boy and every homo-/bi-/pansexual girl in New York — without exception — constantly tries to seduce her, even though she is incapable of maintaining a romantic relationship for more than a few days. The person she dated the longest during high school is Aaron Rose, Blair’s stepbrother. In the same period of time, she also briefly dated Dan Humphrey and Flow, the singer of the band 45.