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

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 declaring no politics at dinner. Tippins's book is a cozy, gossipy read, punctuated by solid, if perfunctory, literary criticism. Like all bohemian utopias, February House (so named because of the residents' February birthdays) was unable to withstand the centrifugal force of its constituent egos. The artists dispersed--to return home, serve in the military, or follow wayward lovers--and the house was demolished to make way for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

Madame de Stael, by Maria Fairweather (Carroll & Graf; $30). At one time, it was said that "there are three great powers in Europe: Britain, Russia and Madame de Stael." Outspoken, childish, intelligent, she lived in a tornado of social engagements, political intrigue, literary work, and love affairs. Fairweather's biography rewardingly chronicles her long career, from busy days at the court of Louis XVI through the French Revolution, the Terror, and the rise and fall of the Napoleonic empire. Growing up, she knew Gibbon, Diderot, and D'Alembert, and met Voltaire; later her circle included Talleyrand, Wellington, Goethe, Schiller, and Byron. Her temperament was legendarily volcanic. Talleyrand, hearing that she had professed herself baffled that he could have married his ...