The novel 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' was published in 1999. Tracy Chevalier’s historical-fiction book imagines the relationship between Johannes Vermeer and the young model associated with his famous painting.
Chevalier drew inspiration from a poster of Vermeer’s painting that she had owned for years. The girl’s ambiguous expression led her to invent a fictional backstory set in seventeenth-century Delft, while researching Dutch society, domestic life, and Vermeer’s artistic world.
The date can cause confusion because the book appeared in different markets at different times. It was published in Britain in 1999, while the American edition followed in 2000. That later U.S. release explains why 2000 sometimes appears in listings, but 1999 is the novel’s publication year.
The book was later adapted into a 2003 film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth. Neither the novel nor the film establishes the historical identity of Vermeer’s model; that central mystery is part of the work’s imaginative appeal.