By Francis Booth | On May 18, 2021 | Updated May 29, 2021 | Comments (0)
A reflection on the period in which Mina Loy and Marianne Moore, modernist poets (among other talents) crossed paths in the early 1920s. Excerpted from Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission.
The poetry of Mina Loy was often compared and sometimes published next to that of the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap put them together in the issue of Little Review that immediately followed their obscenity conviction for printing Ulysses, some time around 1920.
Man Ray took photographs of both of them specially; opposites in looks but potential sisters in their view of female sexuality. And the only issue of the magazine New York Dada had both an article mocking Loy’s relationship with Cravan and a portrait of the Baroness, this time wearing only her jewelry, as the “naked truth” of Dada. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On May 4, 2021 | Updated October 6, 2026 | Comments (0)
This look at the depiction of adolescent and teen girls in the fiction and nonfiction of American author Shirley Jackson is excerpted from Girls in Bloom: Coming of Age in the Mid-20th Century Woman’s Novel by Francis Booth, reprinted by permission.
In the works of Shirley Jackson (1916 – 1965), there is an absence of sex of any kind, other than the veiled implication that Natalie Waite in Hangsaman has had a sexual experience that she does not remember, and which is not described in the novel.
One reason for this lack of sex among her teenage protagonists might be that Jackson had daughters of her own who might read her work. She did know a lot about the adolescent girl; she wrote several of them into her novels and stories, chief among them, the aforementioned Natalie Waite; Harriet Merriam (The Road Through the Wall), and Merricat Blackwood (We Have Always Lived in the Castle). Read More→
By Francis Booth | On April 13, 2021 | Updated October 24, 2025 | Comments (0)
Though not as well known today, Mina Loy was well entrenched in the modernist circles that included leading figures of arts and letters of the 1920s. This musing on Mina Loy and the “Crowd” is excerpted from Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth. Reprinted by permission.
Mina Loy (1882 – 1966), who practiced both as a writer and visual artist, was a vital member of the group of creatives that launched the modernist movement. Born in Hampstead, London, she was a painter, poet, novelist, and playwright, and also achieved some renown as a lamp designer. Read More→
By Francis Booth | On April 9, 2021 | Updated June 4, 2021 | Comments (0)
Towards the end of World War I, the American expatriate writer and poet Hilda Doolittle, H.D. met Annie Winifred Ellerman, known as Bryher. H.D. and Breyher became lovers and would remain intimate for the rest of H.D.’s life, supporting and sustaining each other and sharing the responsibility of parenting H.D.’s daughter Perdita.
However, theirs was not an exclusive partnership. Both took other lovers, and in 1921 Bryher entered into a marriage of convenience with the American writer and publisher Robert McAlmon. This arrangement enabled Bryher to keep her traditional family at arm’s length, and allowed McAlmon to use her wealth to set up his own press.
This excerpt, detailing the complex relationships of a circle of modernist literary figures, is from Everybody I Can Think of Ever: Meetings That Made the Avant-Garde by Francis Booth. Reprinted by permission. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On April 4, 2021 | Updated August 29, 2022 | Comments (0)
The three Brontë sisters — Charlotte, Emily, and Anne — cherished literary ambitions from an early age, and despite lives cut short by illness, earned a prominent place in the English literary canon. The same can’t be said for their brother, Branwell Brontë (1817 – 1848), whose dissipated life ended at age thirty-one, with little to show for his early talent other than thwarted ambition.
The children of Maria Branwell Brontë and Reverend Patrick Brontë, the Brontë siblings grew up in Haworth, England, located in Yorkshire. Maria Branwell Brontë died while the children were still very young, and the two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, died of illness before reaching adolescence. Read More→
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