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. (Nov.)
