A Private Madness: The Genius of Elinor WylieElinor Wylie's body of work - four novels and four volumes of poetry produced between 1921 and 1928 - has often been overshadowed by her controversial personal life. In A Private Madness Evelyn Hively explores the points at which her life and her art intersect and demonstrates how Wylie used language and literary form to transform the chaos of her experiences. This purpose was successfully met, as A Private Madness presents Wylie and her work within the culture of the twenties. Described by contemporaries as an icon of the age, Wylie was illustrative of the tone and mores of the notorious decade in which her poems, novels, and Vanity Fair articles were written. Her friendships with such notables as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, and William Rose Benet and the events she endured - her father suffered breakdowns and a brother, a sister, and her first husband fell victim to suicide - colored her life and often mirrored the temper of the twenties. Her independence, unconventional behavior, narcissism, interest in the occult, the frantic pace of her life, and her problem with alcohol are evident in her novels and her poems. Her work embraces the escapism of the era in which |
Contents
Preface | xi |
A power remote and exquisite 3 | xix |
Bitter springs of truth 10 | xix |
The egregious egoist | 18 |
When the world turns completely upside down | 27 |
Here is my lover here is my friend | 43 |
Words opalescent cool and pearly | 52 |
An iridescent music to be my own | 59 |
Take now the burning question of morality | 113 |
The lady stuffed with pistachio nuts | 119 |
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American Amy Lowell beautiful behavior Beinecke Library Berg Collection Bill Benét Bill's biography Black Armour Cabell called Carl Van Doren Carl Van Vechten Catch the Wind critics death described Dorothy Parker early Edith Olivier editor Edmund Wilson Edna St Elinor Wylie emotional England EW to WRB Fitzgerald friends Hale Papers Hazard heart helped Henry Hodge Horace Wylie husband images included Jennifer Lorn Kathleen Knopf later literary Literature lived London Louis Untermeyer marriage married Mary Colum mind mother Nancy Hoyt Nancy Potter narcissistic Nets to Catch never novel Numbers Orphan Angel poet poetic Portrait praise prose published relationship reveals Rosemary says Shelley Shelley's Shiloh silver sonnet soul spirit Stephen Tennant Stephen Vincent Benét summer Tietjens tion told Venetian Glass Venetian Glass Nephew verse Vincent Millay volume Washington William Rose Benét woman women Woodhouse words writing written Yale University York Public Library young