THE influence of Oprah Winfrey is visible in any given television schedule on any given night. From the confessional talk shows that imitate hers to reality soap operas set in airports and offices, her conceit to make television out of ordinary peoples concerns is now a ubiquitous and powerful part of popular culture. Winfrey turns 50 today, and she shows no signs of slowing. Last year she was the first black woman to be included on the Forbes list of billionaires. So who is televisions most famous female face, and what has she done to us by bringing other peoples secrets into our living rooms?

Winfrey was born to unmarried parents, and raised in poverty by her grandmother in rural Mississippi, and later by her mother in Wisconsin and her father in Tennessee. She has written no narrative autobiography, but try The Uncommon Wisdom of Oprah Winfrey: A Portrait in her Own Words (Citadel Press), edited by Bill Adler. Here Winfrey talks about her relationship with her family during childhood, experimentations with drugs, and the pressures of fame in what is essentially a collection of quotes arranged chronologically.

Those who want an even more thorough familiarity with Winfreys background should try one of the many biographies available. In Oprah Winfrey: The Real Story (HarperCollins), by George Mair, we learn how her early successes in local beauty pageants combined with a natural quick wit led to her first break: she was only 19 when a local television station made her Nashvilles first black and first female news anchor. According to her biographers Winfrey didn t excel at reporting it is said that she cried on air when the stories were sad so she was given her own early-morning talk show. By 1986, aged 34, she was hosting that talk show from Chicago, and when syndicated it became the highest-rated of its kind in the USA.

Now her show draws an estimated 14 million viewers every day in the US alone. She did not invent the format, but she did bring to it a new focus on confession as a means of empowerment for ordinary people. In Oprah Winfrey and the Glamour of Misery (Columbia University Press) Eva Illouz attempts to understand and assess Winfreys hugely popular conceit; The Oprah Winfrey Show, says Illouz, was nothing less at its inception than a new cultural form. Round off any reading on Winfrey with a look at two novels. An Academy Award nomination followed her 1985 performance as Sofia in Stephen Spielbergs adaptation of The Colour Purple (The Womens Press), by Alice Walker, a story of abuse and redemption in the Deep South. And in 1998 Winfrey took to the big screen again in a film version of Beloved (Vintage) by Toni Morrison, playing Sethe, a slave who is visited by the ghost of a murdered child.

DAVID MATTIN