Literary legend Joan Didion - a stylish life in pictures

Didion, who has died aged 87, emerged as part of the ‘New Journalism’ generation of writers in the 1960s and won acclaim for her essays, plays and novels. Her personal style also made her an influential figure in the world of fashion

Main image: Joan Didion in the 1970s Photograph: Everett/Mary Lloyd Estrin

Thu 23 Dec 2021 13.59 EST Last modified on Fri 24 Dec 2021 05.04 EST

  • Joan Didion in what would become her signature look of huge sunglasses, pencil skirts and flats, visits Alcatraz prison in 1967, which featured in her essay Rock of Ages.

  • Didion stands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate park in April 1967. Her experiences of California in the 1960s inspired her essays Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

  • Joan Didion at home in Malibu in 1972.

  • Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, relocated to Los Angeles and adopted a daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, in 1966.

  • Didion’s elegant style and interest in fashion, fostered at Vogue, saw her revered as a a symbol of “cool”.

  • In 2003, Didion began writing The Year of Magical Thinking, which was an exploration of her grief after her husband’s death.

  • Didion became famous for her detached, sometimes elegiac, tone.

  • Didion’s book, The Year of Magical Thinking, documented her strange habits that resulted from her grief over her husband’s death.

  • More than one journalist, when interviewing her, would come to note Joan Didion’s quietness and frail frame with surprise.

  • “Didion was one of the country’s most trenchant writers and astute observers,” Penguin Random House and its imprint Knopf said in a statement.

  • At the age of 80, Didion became the face of French fashion house Céline.
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