Dorothy Parker, born Dorothy Rothschild on 22 August 1893 and dead on 7 June 1967, became one of the most recognizable voices of twentieth-century American letters: a poet of compressed heartbreak, a theater and book critic of dangerous precision, a short-story writer of unusual psychological acuity, a screenwriter, and a public political dissenter. For much of her life, she was treated as the emblem of a particular…
“Her present style has also the simple straightness of a pretzel. A caressing pain in the neck is what her work gives me.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
In the grand narrative of American literature, certain figures occupy a peculiar position—neither entirely forgotten nor properly celebrated, their contributions hovering in that twilight zone between obscurity and recognition. Mary Reynolds Aldis, who lived from 1872 to 1949, stands as one such figure: a woman whose drawing rooms hosted the brightest lights of Chicago's literary renaissance, whose one-act plays capt…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Sorrow, Longing, Spirituality
