"The Secret History" is a novel by Donna Tartt, published in 1992. It is a campus novel set in New England and tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics students at Hampden College, a small, elite liberal arts college located in Vermont based upon Bennington College, where Tartt was a student between 1982 and 1986. The novel is an inverted detective story narrated by one of the six students, Richard Papen, who reflects years later upon the situation that led to the murder of their friend Edmund "Bunny" Corcoran – wherein the events leading up to the murder are revealed sequentially. The story is about an elitist group of college students who, through the encouragement of their eccentric classics professor, escape the bounds of morality and wind up murdering one of their own classmates. The novel explores the circumstances and lasting effects of Bunnys death on the academically and socially isolated group of classics students of which he was a part. The book has been praised for its mesmerizing and powerful storytelling, but some critics have found it insufferable and devoid of character.