Mabel Dodge Luhan--salon hostess, writer, and muse--published four volumes and 1,600 pages of "intimate memories" during the 1930s. In vivid and compelling prose, she explored the momentous changes in sexuality, politics, art, and culture that moved Americans from the Victorian into the modern age. Noted for assembling and inspiring some of the leading creative men and wom
Mabel Dodge Luhan--salon hostess, writer, and muse--published four volumes and 1,600 pages of "intimate memories" during the 1930s. In vivid and compelling prose, she explored the momentous changes in sexuality, politics, art, and culture that moved Americans from the Victorian into the modern age. Noted for assembling and inspiring some of the leading creative men and women of her day--Gertrude Stein, John Reed, and D. H. Lawrence among them--she was a "mover and shaker" of national and international renown during her lifetime (1879-1962). Lois Palken Rudnick, Luhan's biographer, has abridged the original volumes into one book that highlights Luhan's struggles for self-expression and community: from Gilded Age Buffalo, New York; to Florence, Italy; to radical Greenwich Village in New York; and, finally, to Taos, New Mexico, where she met and eventually married her fourth husband, Antonio Luhan, a Taos Pueblo Indian. This new edition of Luhan's edited memoirs (first published in 1999) contains a new foreword as well as the original introduction. Lois Palken Rudnick is Chair of the American Studies Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and the author of numerous books and essays on New Mexico history and culture including "Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds," the award-winning "Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture," and editor of a recent edition of Alice Corbin Henderson's "Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico."
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Paperback
,
270 pages
Published
December 1st 2007
by Sunstone Press
(first published 1999)
Wow--Mabel knew just about everybody who was anybody in the arts and politics of the early 20th century:Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, and Margaret Sanger are a few. Mabel also had enough money to do exactly what she pleased, which was the good news and the bad news. As a child, her family's wealth meant she was lonely, raised by servants while her parents kept her at arm's length. As a young woman, she was told by her lover John Reed (remember the movie Reds?) that the reason she was continual
Wow--Mabel knew just about everybody who was anybody in the arts and politics of the early 20th century:Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, and Margaret Sanger are a few. Mabel also had enough money to do exactly what she pleased, which was the good news and the bad news. As a child, her family's wealth meant she was lonely, raised by servants while her parents kept her at arm's length. As a young woman, she was told by her lover John Reed (remember the movie Reds?) that the reason she was continually depressed was that she had no work. "You need to be busy, Mabel!"
Rather than seeking the spotlight, she preferred to be the observer, and provide support for other creative people. Among those who encouraged her to write her memoirs was D.H. Lawrence, and write she did: four volumes, published when she was in her 40s. The present volume is an edited version of the four volumes, bringing the length down to a manageable 245 pp. When she came to Taos in 1917, after having lived in New York and Italy, she felt she was finally home. It was quite a ride, Mabel's life, and worth your time.
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