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…
“Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.”
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Edwardian Poets, Light Verse Poets, Modernist Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Irony, Sorrow, Despair
In the autumn of 1867, a sixteen-year-old girl sat at her desk in Litchfield, Michigan, struggling with algebra homework. The mathematical figures before her kept blurring, replaced by a persistent phrase that demanded attention: "Curfew must not ring tonight." What began as an interruption to her studies would become one of the most recited poems of the nineteenth century, launching Rose Hartwick into unexpected lit…
Neighbourhood:
American Poets, Children's Verse, Death & Mortality, Victorian Poets, Women Poets
Emotional landscape: Tenderness, Peace, Wonder
