The Cramoisy Queen: A Life of Caresse Crosby Book

"An American debutante turned expatriate writer and literary benefactor, Caresse Crosby rejected the culturally prescribed roles of women of her era and background in search of an independent, creative, and socially responsible life. Poet, memoirist, advocate of women's rights and the peace movement, Crosby published and promoted modern writers and artists such as Hart Crane, Dorothy Parker, Salvador Dali, and Romare Bearden. She also earned a place in the world of fashion by patenting one of the earliest versions of the brassiere." "Behind her public success was a chaotic life: three marriages, two divorces, the suicide of Harry Crosby, strained relationships with her children, and legal confrontations over efforts to establish a center for world peace. As the first biographer to consider both the literary and social contexts of Crosby's life, Linda Hamalian details Crosby's professional accomplishments and her personal struggles. The Cramoisy Queen: A Life of Caresse Crosby also measures the impact of small presses on modernist literature and draws connections between key writers and artists of the era." "Born Mary Phelps Jacob in 1892 to aristocratic parents in New York City, Crosby acquired additional wealth and prestige when she married into the Peabody family in 1915. But she rebuffed her comfortable class affiliations and scandalized Boston society when she left Richard Peabody to marry Harry Crosby in 1922. It was Harry who convinced her to change her name to Caresse and who later called her his Cramoisy Queen. The couple moved to Paris, where Harry was a writer and Caresse took art classes. Together, they founded Black Sun Press, which published such influential figures as D. H. Lawrence, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce and also reprinted classic texts in letterpress editions. Arguing that Caresse was the driving force behind Black Sun Press, Hamalian outlines how she far surpassed her programmed role as the mirror-companion of her husband