Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends (Writing American Women) [Hardcover]

Richard Londraville (Author), Janis Londraville (Author), William M. Murphy (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The phenomenon of a "woman whose vitality and ability could not be confined by the age in which she lived" is a timely and fruitful subject. Jeanne Robert Foster (1879-1970), a poet, journalist and model, may not be well-known to contemporary readers, but this story of her life by two literary scholars speaks for many women of the past century who, while creative in their own right, believed that "genius was a male principle." Born in the Adirondacks, Foster was recognized as a poet with the publication of Neighbors of Yesterday and Wild Apples in 1916, yet her lifelong impulse was to nurture creativity in others, all of whom were men. After suddenly marrying, at age 18, a man older than her father, Foster escaped poverty and broadened her world, eventually moving to New York City (while her ailing husband remained in Schenectady) and becoming the literary editor at the American Review of Reviews. Foster's intimate relationship with John Quinn, a lawyer and benefactor of the arts who "was the superior male that Jeanne had always longed to serve," helped to gain her access to literary and artistic luminaries, including John and William Butler Yeats, James Joyce and Ford Madox Ford, with whom she helped edit the modernist literary journal transatlantic review. The authors, who worked with Foster on this biography until her death, use their "voluminous notes from... conversations with her over the years and... many letters" between them in assembling this competent work, and scholars will appreciate the amount of primary material included here. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Jeanne Robert Foster is not a familiar name today, but earlier in this century she was a woman of real repute. Her Adirondack childhood was economically impoverished, but her marriage at age 18 to the 46-year-old Matlock Foster allowed her to move to New York City, where she became a high-profile model, stage actress, respected journalist, and poet. She had affairs along the way, most problematically with occultist Aleister Crowley, but her friendships with John Quinn, John Butler Yeats (an antifeminist but also a mentor and astute critic of her poetry), and Czech nationalist Thomas Masaryk, held deep meaning for her. She gained recognition as a poet with the publication of Neighbors of Yesterday and Wild Apples in 1916, which in turn lead to her connections with T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Ford Madox Ford, and other Modernists. Using diaries and other primary sources, the authors (coeditors of Too Long a Sacrifice: The Letters of Maud Gonne and John Quinn) have written an intriguing profile of a multilayered personality that literary scholars will relish. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Robert L. Kelly, Fort Wayne Comm. Schs., IN

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr (Sd); 1st edition (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081560730X
• ISBN-13: 978-0815607304
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #111,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #96 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Regional U.S. > Mid Atlantic

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved this book!, February 14, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends (Writing American Women) (Hardcover)

What an amazing woman! I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Jeanne Foster, and it brought back many memories of my early years in the "north country" before I retired and moved to Florida. The authors winter here in Venice, and they have given many interesting talks in the area about Foster and her famous friends, displaying diaries, actual letters to Foster from people like Ford Madox Ford and Ezra Pound, and drawings of her by William Butler Yeats's father. Recommended for lovers of biography and great stories.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford : Jeanne Robert Foster and, November 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends (Writing American Women) (Hardcover)

This book is a great story of a truly "American" woman who was a friend to the world or at least to the world of artists,writers, and politicians. The biography has everything to keep a reader reading: beauty, poetry, intrigue, sex, passion mysticism, and sweetness. I wish I could have known this person called Jeanne Robert Foster.