Person and Persona
CLAUDE CAHUN may not be particularly well known outside the art world, but this highly readable biography of the 20th-century French writer, artist, and photographer ought to help change this situation.
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An Activist on Three Fronts
In Jane Crow, Rosalind Rosenberg delineates Murray’s education, career, and personal life in the context of American history.
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Waugh’s Life Reconsidered: Still Dismal
WHEN EVELYN WAUGH died of a sudden heart attack at 62 on Easter Sunday, 1966, his literary reputation was in decline, his work seen as nostalgic and retrograde compared to the issue-oriented social realism of writers then in ascendance (such as Kingsley Amis and Anthony Burgess). However, as journalist Philip Eade argues in his new biography, “revisiting” Waugh to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his death, he is now celebrated as one of the greatest English satirical novelists of the 20th century.
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Where to Find Virginia Woolf
IN THIS CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY of Virginia Woolf, Ira Nadel takes us on a tour of the places of significance in Woolf’s life while drawing connections among these places, her relationships, and her writings.
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Kirstein’s Letters 2: Friends & Lovers
In Part I of this essay, published in the January-February 2017 issue of this magazine, I described the recent discovery of a large amount of new archival material on…More
And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens
Nevertheless, Ibell tries hard to rescue the plays that the critics serially panned after his last commercial hit, The Night of the Iguana. Plays like And Tell Sad Stories of the Death of Queens, Steps Must Be Gentle, and Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws were experimental, openly concerned with homosexuals, and mostly one-acts.
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A Foremother of Lesbian Publishing
Indomitable is well-documented and provides helpful aids to readers: a timeline, end notes, and a useful index. Joanne Passet has done justice to a complex personality who played an indispensable role in the development of lesbian publishing.
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Reassessing a 19th-century Novelist
IF WRITER Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) is remembered today, it is usually for her close friendship and literary rivalry with Henry James. Both writers had made a pact early in their friendship to burn their correspondence, and much of their relationship remains wreathed in mystery.
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The Definitive ‘Miss Bette Davis’
KIRK FREDERICK’S biography of “male actress” Charles Pierce (1926-1999), Write That Down, greets the eye with an iconic photograph of Pierce impersonating Bette Davis, his signature role.
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No Modifier Required
Although [Terrence] McNally’s gay bona fides are beyond question, he resists being labeled a “gay playwright.”
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