Fountaindale Public Library

Lives of the wives, five literary marriages, Carmela Ciuraru

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 305-308) and index

collective biography

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Lives of the wives

bibliography

1365607899

Carmela Ciuraru

five literary marriages

The history of wives is largely one of silence, resilience, and forbearance. Toss in celebrity, amle privilege, ruthless ambition, narcissism. misogyny, infidelity, alcoholism, and a mood disorder or two, and it's easy to understand why the marriages of so many famous writers have been stomry, short-lived, and mutually destructive. "It's been my experience," the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote, "that nobody holds a man's brutality to his wife against him." Literry wives are a unique breed, requiring a particular kind of fortitude. In this book, aurthor Carmela Ciuraru shares the stories of five literary marriages, exposing the misery behind closed doors. The legendary British theater critic Kenneth Tynan encouraged his American wife, Elaine Dundy, to write, then watched in a jealous rage as she became a bestselling author. In the early years of his marriage, Roald Dahl enjoyed basking in the glow of his glamorous movie star wife, Patricia Neal, until he detested her for being wealthier and more famous than he was. Elizabeth Jane Howard had to divorce Kingsley Amis to escape his suffocating needs and devote herself to her own writing. In the marriage of the Italian novelists Elsa Morante and Alberto Moravia, it was Morante who often behaved abusively toward her cool, detached husband, even as he unwaveringly admired his wife's talents and championed her work. The most conventional partnership in the book is a lesbian couple, Una Troubridge and Radclyffe Hall, both of whom were socially and politically conservative and unapologetic snobs

adult