Literary Lives.(V.S. Pritchett: A Working Life)(K)(Madame de Stael)(February House)(Book Review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Bookmark this article Print this article Link to this article Email this article Digg It! Add to del.icio.us RSS

COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

February House, by Sherill Tippins (Houghton Mifflin; $24). In 1940, George Davis, an editor recently fired from Harper's Bazaar, rented a dilapidated house in Brooklyn Heights in which he installed brilliant, volatile artists, who spent the next year working, fighting, and drinking. Carson McCullers sipped sherry while, down the hall, the burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee typed her mystery novel with three-inch fingernails, and, downstairs, Benjamin Britten and Paul Bowles fought over practice space. W. H. Auden was housemother, collecting rent, assigning chores, and...

Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.