Linda Wagner-Martin

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald

An American Woman's Life

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born at the dawn of the twentieth century, destined for celebrity as one half of the infamous darlings of the Jazz Age literary world. For the first time, Zelda's story is told from her own perspective rather than through the lens of her famous husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. A southern belle from Montgomery, Alabama, Fitzgerald epitomized the "New Woman" of the modern era in New York and Paris, all the while living on the edge of a nervous breakdown. With a wealth of new information from the Princeton archives, author Linda Wagner-Martin vividly illustrates Zelda's psychological landscape, from the roots of her alcoholism to her enviable artistic gifts and achievements: novels, essays, short stories, ballet and even painting. This is a riveting and provocative portrayal of a talented woman's professional and emotional conflicts, as relevant today as half a century ago.Praise for Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: 'Wagner-Martin has done more research into the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and brought greater intelligence to its interpretation than anyone else. ... anyone who wants to understand how it was with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald will learn a great deal from this book' - Scott Donaldson, author of Hemingway vs Fitzgerald 'Thought-provoking and illuminating' - Dale Spender, author of Man Made Language 'Linda Wagner-Martin changes our image of Zelda from devil-may-care flapper to Southern Belle, from lunatic to professional woman, from hysteric to talented writer. This cultural biography at long last helps us to locate Zelda within an unfolding history of American women's social, sexual, and artistic practices.' - Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University Linda Wagner-Martin has won teaching awards at Michigan State University and UNC. She is currently the president of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Among her fifty edited and written books are biographies of Sylvia Plath, Gertrude Stein, Ellen Glasgow, Barbara Kingsolver, and Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald.

Produktdetails

• Biographies Nr.2
• Verlag: Lume Books
• Seitenzahl: 340
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. März 2022
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 198mm x 129mm x 21mm
• Gewicht: 406g
• ISBN-13: 9781839013829
• ISBN-10: 1839013826
• Artikelnr.: 63641054

Autorenporträt

Linda Wagner-Martin is Hanes Professor of English and Comparative Literature at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA. She was the 2011 recipient of the Hubbell Medal for lifetime service in American literature (sponsored by the MLA), and has received the Guggenheim fellowship, the senior National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, the Bunting Institute fellowship, and awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Philosophical Association and others. She has published more than fifty-five books of criticism, some edited, including Sylvia Plath: A Biography (1987) and "Favored Strangers": Gertrude Stein and Her Family (1995), as well as studies of Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, Barbara Kingsolver, and others. Recent books are A History of American Literature from 1950 to the Present (2013) and Toni Morrison and the Maternal (2014).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface Zelda Sayre, Belle The Courtship Celebrity Couple Travels Europe Once More Hollywood and Ellerslie Zelda as Artist: Writer and Dancer The Crack-Up, 1930 On the Way To Being Cured The Phipps Clinic and Baltimore Zelda as Patient The Crack-Up, 1936 Endings Notes Bibliography Index

Rezensionen

'Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald: An American Woman's Story is our fullest portrait yet of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing and idiosyncratic women. Linda Wagner-Martin's sympathetic and incisive account changes our image of Zelda from devil-may-care flapper to Southern Belle, from lunatic to professional woman, from hysteric to talented writer. Ballerina, author, mother, and wife, Zelda was the product of a specific time and place. This cultural biography at long last helps us to locate Zelda within an unfolding history of American women's social, sexual, and artistic practices.' - Cathy N. Davidson, Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies and Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of English, Duke University, USA

'Wagner-Martin has done more research into the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and brought greater intelligence to its interpretation than anyone else. She captures what it was like to grow up a belle in Montgomery, Alabama. She demonstrates how abuse of alcohol, by both parties, impaired Zelda's marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald. And in an excellent and sensitive reading of voluminous correspondence, some of it available for the first time here, she effectively challenges the easy conclusion that Zelda was a victim of 'madness', a word often used to undermine her value as a human being. Anyone who wants to understand how it was with Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald will learn a great deal from this book.' - Scott Donaldson, author of the Fitzgerald biography, A Fool for Love and Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald

'Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald wanted it all: husband, family, work - along with glamour, fame and creative success. In the psychiatric terms of her time, she was a woman who did not know her place. And she paid an awful price. The question is - would things have been any easier for her today? Once more Linda Wagner-Martin maps the ups and downs of a woman's life in thought provoking and illuminating ways...' - Dale Spender, Adjunct Professor, University of Queensland, Australia

'Prolific literary biographer Wagner-Martin (Sylvia Plath, etc.) utilizes newly available files at Princeton for this fresh reassessment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's flamboyant, creative, troubled wife, stressing that Zelda's personality and character were shaped by her Southern upbringing and her relationship with her parents....Wagner-Martin's sturdy analysis does much to dispel the myth that the necessity of coping with Zelda's mental problems was Scott's tragic nemesis...' - Publishers Weekly

'A prolific author, Wagner-Martin has written biographical and critical studies of many American writers, including Sylvia Plath, Ernest Hemingway and Anne Sexton. Her work in this book, as in many of those previous efforts, excels in its efficiency, clarity and readability.' - Charity Vogel, Buffalo News