{"id":148582,"date":"2020-10-22T11:52:27","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T15:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=148582"},"modified":"2020-10-22T14:07:12","modified_gmt":"2020-10-22T18:07:12","slug":"the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Jane Heap and Margaret C. Anderson, 1927<\/p><\/div>\n

In the early thirties, for a certain clique of Left Bank\u2013dwelling American lesbians, the place to be was not an expat haunt like the Caf\u00e9 de Flore or Le Deux Magots. Nor was it Le Monocle, the wildly popular nightclub owned by tuxedoed butch Lulu du Montparnasse and named for the accessory worn to signal one\u2019s orientation. According to the writer Solita Solano, the \u201conly important thing in Paris\u201d was a study group on the philosophies of the Greek-Armenian mystic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, held at Jane Heap\u2019s apartment. Heap, a Kansas-born artist, writer, and gallerist, was Gurdjieff\u2019s official emissary, a rare honor. Under her supervision, the group engaged in intense self-revelation, narrating the stories of their lives without censoring or embellishing. As the author Kathryn Hulme explained in her memoir, Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure<\/em>, the goal was to uncover the real I<\/em>\u00a0and thus escape being \u201ca helpless slave to circumstances, to whatever chameleon personality took the initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who gathered in Heap\u2019s small sitting room were Janet Flanner, the New Yorker<\/em> Paris correspondent and Solano\u2019s lifelong partner; the journalist and author Djuna Barnes; and the actress Louise Davidson. One attendee, Hulme noted, would enter the room \u201clike a Valkyrie\u201d and \u201cknew how to load the questions she fired at Jane, how to bait her to reveal more than perhaps was intended for beginners.\u201d The Valkyrie was Margaret Caroline Anderson, founder of the trailblazing Little Review<\/em>, with whom Heap had first encountered Gurdjieff in New York in the early twenties. Heap and Anderson, whose friendship outlasted a love affair and a professional partnership, were kindred geniuses with an exclusive affinity. When Barnes, after a fling with Heap, marveled at her \u201cdeep personal madness,\u201d Anderson replied: \u201cDeep personal knowledge\u2014a supreme sanity.\u201d Heap called Anderson \u201cmy blessed antagonistic complement.\u201d Via their shared endeavors and the cross-pollination of their ideas\u2014artistic, literary, and spiritual\u2014these two remarkable women left an indelible imprint on avant-garde culture between the wars.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Margaret C. Anderson<\/p><\/div>\n

They first met one afternoon in February 1916, when Heap dropped by the The Little Review<\/em>\u2019s office in the Fine Arts Building on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago. She was thirty-two, with cropped dark hair, a long straight nose, strong cheekbones, and a strikingly androgynous style. A typical outfit was a men\u2019s frock coat, a high-necked shirt, and a tie. In winter, she added a Russian fur hat, and she always wore bright red lipstick. Anderson, three years her junior, had gone through a tomboy phase but was now exquisitely feminine, with a knack for projecting flawless chic despite never having any money. \u201cHer profile was delicious,\u201d Flanner recalled in a posthumous tribute for The<\/em> New Yorker<\/em>, \u201cher hair blond and wavy, her a laughter a soprano ripple, her gait undulating beneath her snug tailleur<\/em>.\u201d Anderson set great store by looks and charm, and believed her conversation improved when she felt attractive. To an earnest young short-story writer who came to her for advice, she said: \u201cUse a little lip rouge, to begin with. Beauty may bring you experiences to write about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heap\u2019s handsome face, Anderson wrote in her memoir The Fiery Fountains<\/em>, resembled Oscar Wilde\u2019s \u201cin his only beautiful photograph.\u201d And yet, \u201cwhen Jane talked you were conscious of only one feature\u2014her soft deep eyes, in which you could watch thought take form \u2026 thought that was always clearest when she talked of the indefinable, the vast, or the unknown.\u201d An unusual childhood had cultivated Heap\u2019s questing, expansive mind. Her English father was a warden at the Topeka State Hospital, and he lived with his family in the hospital grounds. Young Jane roamed the place, lonely and thirsty for knowledge. Adults were poor sources of enlightenment, she found, except for the patients, who seemed to possess an authentic truth and authority that others lacked. The asylum, Heap wrote in a 1917 Little Review<\/em> piece, \u201cwas a world outside of the world, where realities had to be imagined\u2026Very early I had given up everyone except the Insane.\u201d She dreamed of one day meeting those ultimate imaginers of reality, artists. \u201cWho had made the pictures,\u201d she wondered, \u201cthe books, and the music in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Man Ray, Jane Heap<\/em>, c.1926<\/p><\/div>\n

Heap studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, and she returned to the city after spending a year in Germany with her first serious girlfriend. During her twenties she taught art, designed theatrical sets, acted in plays, and fell in and out of love. \u201cI believe in living a little more than necessary,\u201d she wrote at age twenty-four, \u201cseeing and believing life to be as one wished it to be, creating beauty where it doesn\u2019t happen to exist.\u201d When she met Anderson, she was nursing a broken heart and craving a grander conduit for her ambitions. At a stroke both problems were solved: she became coeditor of the two-year-old Little Review<\/em> and moved with Anderson to California. They rented a ranch house in the redwood forests of Marin County and talked, nonstop, about art. \u201cMy mind was inflamed by Jane\u2019s ideas,\u201d Anderson reminisced in her memoir My Thirty Years\u2019 War<\/em>, \u201cbecause of her uncanny knowledge about the human composition, her unfailing clairvoyance about human motivation. This is what I had been waiting for, searching for, all my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anderson grew up in Indiana, one of three sisters in a middle-class family. At age twenty-one she dropped out of a women\u2019s college in Ohio, where she studied piano, to move to Chicago. Her bemused parents, who expected her to marry and settle down in their \u201ccountry clubs and bridge\u201d milieu, wanted to know what on earth she was seeking. Self-expression, she said, which meant \u201cbeing able to think, say, and do what you believed in.\u201d Her father retorted: \u201cSeems to me you do nothing else.\u201d In Chicago, Anderson became a magazine journalist and a prolific book critic. But she was always restless for her next big adventure. The<\/em> Little Review<\/em> was conceived when she attributed a depressed mood to \u201cnothing inspired\u201d happening in her life. The remedy came to her: she would launch the most interesting magazine of all time. \u201cI knew that someone would give the money,\u201d she wrote in My Thirty Years\u2019 War<\/em>. \u201cThis is one kind of natural law I always see in operation. Someone would have to. Of course someone did.\u201d She had just turned twenty-seven.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Anderson\u2019s guiding editorial principle was the superiority of artists over intellectuals. As she bluntly put it: \u201cI didn\u2019t consider intellectuals intelligent. I never liked them or their thoughts about life.\u201d Merit would be her sole criteria for accepting work, with no pandering to commercialism or conservatism, or indeed to any ideology\u2014though she had a fondness for anarchism and was an avowed feminist. Fundamental to art, Anderson insisted, was liberty. In the introduction to the March 1914 inaugural issue, she offered this impassioned address:<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever read poetry with a feeling that it was your religion, your very life; if you\u2019ve ever come suddenly upon the whiteness of a Venus in a dim, deep room; if you\u2019ve ever felt music replacing your shabby soul with a new one of shining gold; if, in the early morning, you\u2019ve watched a bird with great white wings fly from the edge of the sea straight up into the rose-colored sun\u2014if these things have happened to you and continue to happen till you\u2019re left quite speechless with the wonder of it all, then you\u2019ll understand our hope to bring them nearer to the common experience of the people who read us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

During its first couple of years, The<\/em> Little Review<\/em> featured work by Sherwood Anderson, John Galsworthy, Rupert Brooke, Emma Goldman, W.\u2009B. Yeats, H.\u2009D., and Amy Lowell. In the March 1915 issue, Anderson herself put forth an argument for gay rights, the first lesbian to do so in print. \u201cWith us,\u201d she railed, \u201clove is just as punishable as murder or robbery \u2026 because it is not expressed according to conventional morality.\u201d After Heap joined as coeditor, the magazine published Hemingway\u2019s first short stories and the first excerpts from Ulysses<\/em>; poetry by T.\u2009S. Eliot, Gertrude Stein, and William Carlos Williams; art by Picasso and Brancusi, and essays by Ford Madox Ford and Andr\u00e9 Breton. Heap introduced a new motto: \u201cTo express the emotions of life is to live \/ To express the life of emotions is to make art.\u201d The magazine\u2019s uncompromising ethos was affirmed in September 1916, when an issue was released with thirteen blank pages as a \u201cwant ad.\u201d Too few submissions had been judged worthy of publication, and they saw no point in laboring \u201cto perpetuate the dull.\u201d<\/p>\n

The<\/em> Little Review<\/em> couldn\u2019t pay its contributors and had a circulation of only a few thousand. Still, its reputation for artistic radicalism attracted high-profile collaborators. Amy Lowell, who in Anderson\u2019s opinion \u201chad more feminine whims and humors than ten women,\u201d lobbied to be poetry editor. In a fit of pique after being snubbed by Ezra Pound, Lowell planned to show him \u201cwho\u2019s who in this business\u201d and offered to subsidize\u00a0The<\/em> Little Review<\/em> with $150 a month. Anderson was not remotely tempted, despite living in virtual penury in order to pay for printing costs: \u201cNo clairvoyance was needed to know that Amy Lowell would dictate, uniquely and majestically, any adventure in which she had a part.\u201d Instead, Anderson engaged Pound\u2014who was at a safer distance in London\u2014as European editor. He set out his terms in a letter: \u201cI want an \u2018official organ\u2019 (vile phrase). I mean I want a place where I and T. S. Eliot can appear once a month (or once an \u2018issue\u2019) and where Joyce can appear when he likes, and where Wyndham Lewis can appear if he comes back from the war.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intent on making The<\/em> Little Review<\/em> an \u201cinternational organ,\u201d Anderson moved herself, a reluctant Heap, and the magazine to New York in early 1917. They found an apartment on West Sixteenth Street, above an undertaker and an exterminator. This unpropitious location was counterbalanced by the skillful decorative stamp the couple put on all their homes. While living in their California house, they had painted the furniture and fireplace to such pleasing effect that their landlord, the local sheriff, wanted to refund more than the deposit. In New York they covered the walls, painstakingly, with Chinese gold paper and hung a blue-covered divan from the ceiling with large black chains. Here they received would-be contributors, who were sometimes beseeching, sometimes antagonistic. \u201cWe were considered heartless, flippant, ruthless, devastating,\u201d Anderson recalled. But, soon enough, \u201cwe would stand revealed as two simple sincere people with serious ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

A story by Wyndham Lewis caused The<\/em> Little Review<\/em>\u2019s first disastrous conflict with the censors. In \u201cCantleman\u2019s Spring-Mate,\u201d published in the May 1917 issue, a disaffected English soldier seduces a girl before going to fight in France. She writes to tell him she\u2019s pregnant, but he ignores her letters with the same blank ruthlessness that allows him to kill Germans without flinching. The U.S. Post Office, deeming the story both obscene and anti-war, burned the four-thousand-copy print run. If other editors might have been cowed into cautiousness, Heap and Anderson were anything but fainthearted. When Pound sent the first chapter of James Joyce\u2019s Ulysses<\/em>, he warned it could cause trouble. They didn\u2019t care: they knew it was a masterpiece. \u201cWe\u2019ll print it,\u201d Anderson declared, \u201cif it\u2019s the last effort of our lives.\u201d The twenty-three-part serialization began in March 1918; over the next two years, four issues were confiscated and burned by the Post Office. As Anderson wrote in My Thirty Years\u2019 War<\/em>:<\/p>\n

It was like a burning at the stake as far as I was concerned. The care we had taken to preserve Joyce\u2019s text intact; the worry over the bills that accumulated when we had no advance funds; the technique I used on printer, bookbinder, paper houses\u2014tears, prayers, hysterics or rages\u2014to make them push ahead without a guarantee of money; the addressing, wrapping, stamping, mailing; the excitement of anticipating the world\u2019s response to the literary masterpiece of our generation \u2026 and then a notice from the Post Office: BURNED.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In October 1920, Heap and Anderson were arrested and charged with distributing obscenity over \u201cNausicaa,\u201d from the April 1920 issue. In this episode Leopold Bloom, his hand in his pocket, watches a young woman reclining on a beach. Thrilling to his gaze, she lets her skirt fall above her garter belt and he brings himself to orgasm. John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, believed the text would corrupt young women, and he filed a formal complaint. At court for an initial hearing, Anderson and Heap appeared with their supporters, stylishly bohemian Greenwich Village women. The British poet-artist and Little Review<\/em> contributor Mina Loy observed: \u201cWe looked too<\/em> wholesome in Court representing filthy literature.\u201d The magistrate ruled that the literature was indeed filthy, and the case was sent for trial. In the next issue of The<\/em> Little Review<\/em>, a defiant Heap pointed out:<\/p>\n

Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low cut sleeveless gowns, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere\u2014seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom\u2014and no one is corrupted. Can merely reading about the thoughts he thinks corrupt a man when his thoughts do not? All power to the artist, but this is not his function.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In February 1921, at the Court of Special Sessions, three literary experts were called to testify in front of three judges that \u201cNausicaa\u201d was art, not pornography. When the British novelist John Cowper Powys declared it a work of beauty that posed no threat to young girls, Heap restrained herself from saying that a young girl\u2019s mind frightened her more than anyone\u2019s. In one farcical moment, the prosecutor asked that the court hear some offending passages. A snoozing white-haired judge perked up, contemplated Anderson in her pearls and silk blouse, and forbade that obscenities be read out in her presence. Told she was the publisher, his honor said with paternal solicitude: \u201cI am sure she didn\u2019t know the significance of what she was publishing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heap and Anderson were, nevertheless, found guilty under the Comstock Laws and each fined $50. Anderson regretted paying it; had she gone to jail, she reasoned, the publicity might have been greater. As it was, neither the New York Times<\/em> nor any New York newspaper came to the women\u2019s defense. It would be another thirteen years before Ulysses<\/em> was legally published in the U.S. When critics began lauding it (while often misunderstanding it, Anderson thought), they typically neglected to cite The<\/em> Little Review <\/em>as the first publisher.<\/p>\n

The Ulysses<\/em> debacle strained Heap and Anderson\u2019s already fraying relationship. For five years, they had been inseparable: moving from place to place, putting all their financial and emotional resources into The<\/em> Little Review<\/em>, and tolerating each other\u2019s foibles. Anderson idolized Heap, but she was not an easy person to live with. Prone to dark depressions, she regularly threatened suicide. \u201cThe light is too brutal for me here,\u201d she would say. \u201cI am going back to the grave from which I came.\u201d She kept a revolver in a trunk; Anderson lived in fear while feigning nonchalance. \u201cI don\u2019t know what poor human being first discovered the fact,\u201d she later mused, \u201cthat the surest way to hold people\u2019s interest is to subject them to torment.\u201d She inflicted her own torments by dallying with other women. Heap was her one true love, she assured her. There was no need to be jealous. But to brooding, romantic Heap, casual infidelity was incomprehensible. \u201cIf I loved anyone as she says she loves me,\u201d she lamented in a letter to a friend, \u201cit would make me go into a long illness to be as free as she is now of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet it was Anderson whose mental equilibrium, her preternatural ability to show no weakness, collapsed. She\u2019d had enough of \u201cpublishing drudgery\u201d and wanted to close The<\/em> Little Review<\/em>. \u201cI argued that it had begun logically with the inarticulateness of a divine afflatus and should end logically with the epoch\u2019s supreme articulation\u2014Ulysses<\/em>.\u201d But Heap was determined to keep it going. She was also determined that their relationship continue unchanged, despite simmering acrimony and ebbing passion. Then, into this tense household, came Anderson\u2019s young nephews, Fritz and Tom Peters. Her sister Lois had been hospitalized with a nervous breakdown, and the boys had nowhere else to go. Anderson, who didn\u2019t have a maternal bone in her body, felt trapped in all directions and suffered her own nervous breakdown.<\/p>\n

Anderson found happiness again in a new relationship, with the French soprano and actress Georgette Leblanc. They met through a mutual friend, the pianist Allen Tanner, and for both women it was love at first sight. Leblanc, who was eighteen years Anderson\u2019s senior and reaching the end of a celebrated performing career, said: \u201cThere is something perfect in her soul.\u201d Eager to begin a new chapter, Anderson at last renounced her Little Review<\/em> responsibilities. Heap was, of course, hurt by this double defection. But she remained committed to the magazine, over which she assumed editorial control. She also set up the Little Review Gallery on East Eleventh Street, specializing in European Dadaists and surrealists such as Andr\u00e9 Masson, Hans Arp, Kurt Schwitters, and Hannah H\u00f6ch. And while Anderson and Leblanc enjoyed a romantic idyll in a rustic New Jersey mansion, Heap adopted Fritz and Tom. Perhaps she wanted, even if subconsciously, a permanent tie to Anderson.<\/p>\n

Their fates would remain entwined for another reason: a mutual and unending fascination with the doctrines of Gurdjieff. In this diminutive middle-aged esoterist with a shaved head and a black handlebar mustache, they saw, in Anderson\u2019s words, \u201ca messenger between two worlds \u2026 a seer, a prophet, a messiah?\u201d In early 1924, the mystic visited New York on a promotional tour. That summer Anderson, Leblanc, Heap and the boys, and other friends all moved to France to study at Gurdjieff\u2019s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man in Fountainebleau, outside of Paris. A former Carmelite monastery set in forty-five acres of land, it housed around sixty men and women, who listened to talks, participated in sacred dances, and worked in the gardens and kitchens. The Modernist writer Katherine Mansfield spent her final days there, very happily. Just weeks before her death from tuberculosis in 1923, she wrote to her husband, the writer John Middleton Murry: \u201cThere is certainly no other spot on this whole planet where one can be taught as one is taught here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gurdjieff hailed from the South Caucasus, part of the Russian Empire, where he was born to a Greek father and an Armenian mother. Around the turn of the twentieth century, he left home to travel the world, visiting monasteries, temples, and other holy places. The various spiritual disciplines he encountered were adapted into his cosmology, what he called The Fourth Way, The Work, or The System. Most people, he believed, exist in a state of \u201cwaking sleep,\u201d their dormant souls trapped by their personalities and their lives buffeted by external forces. He taught that to uncover one\u2019s authentic self, or \u201cessence,\u201d and gain free will, it is necessary to consciously, and with effort, observe the self and learn which of the three mechanical centers\u2014physical, emotional, or mental\u2014dominates. In no small part thanks to Heap and Anderson\u2019s endorsement, these ideas spread through the interwar bohemia of New York and Paris. Kathryn Hulme remarked that while no one seemed to know Gurdjieff, \u201chis reputation loomed in Left Bank conversations in a persistent hush-hush way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gurdjieff found a true disciple in Heap, and over the subsequent years, she attained a high enough expertise in The System to teach it. Absorbed with this new purpose, she published the final issue of The<\/em> Little Review <\/em>in May 1929. Heap\u2019s parting words in that issue were forceful: \u201cSelf-expression is not enough; experiment is not enough; the recording of special moments or cases is not enough. All of the arts have broken faith or lost connection with their origin and function.\u201d The transcendence she had hungered for as a lonely little girl, wandering around the insane asylum, was no longer art\u2019s sole dominion.<\/p>\n

In 1935, Gurdjieff sent Heap to London to teach. She moved with her girlfriend, Elspeth Champcommunal, a fashion designer. Without a leader, the longstanding Paris study group was bereft. They decided to seek out Gurdjieff himself, and the group re-formed under his supervision. Its members grew to include Anderson, Leblanc, Solano (who also became Gurdjieff\u2019s secretary), Hulme, her friend Alice Rohrer (a milliner from San Francisco), Louise Davidson, and Elizabeth Gordon\u2014an unmarried Englishwoman and the only heterosexual, introduced into the group by Gurdjieff. He likened their \u201cinner world journey\u201d to a high mountain climb where they must be roped together for safety: hence they called themselves The Rope. They met daily, sometimes twice; anyone who sought to join them was curtly rebuffed. They shared meals, performing rituals around food and alcohol, all in the service of learning \u201chow to act, rather than be acted upon.\u201d The meetings went on for only about two years, but the women had formed what Hulme called an \u201cexalted\u201d lifelong bond: \u201cOur work with Gurdjieff had created an inner-world intimacy, a kind of caring for the soul of another such as I had never experienced before in any human relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heap and Anderson kept up a correspondence in the late thirties and during the war, when Anderson and Leblanc retreated to Le Cannet, north of Cannes in the unoccupied zone. In October 1941, Leblanc died of cancer, aged seventy-two. Sending her condolence, Heap wrote: \u201cGeorgette will never perish. Die all we must, but we can hope that none of us who has \u2018eaten\u2019 of Gurdjieff\u2019s food will ever perish.\u201d Heap settled permanently in London, living with Champcommunal in St John\u2019s Wood and conducting Gurdjieff study groups until her death in 1964, at age eighty. Anderson died in 1973, aged eighty-six, and was buried next to Leblanc in Cannes.<\/p>\n

In 1962 Anderson published The Unknowable Gurdjieff<\/em>, a memoir of The Rope and Gurdjieff\u2019s teachings. The book was dedicated to Heap. A fitting epitaph to these lives of peerless nonconformism is Anderson\u2019s affronted reaction, in the late sixties, to questions about The<\/em> Little Review<\/em>\u2019s selection process: \u201cMon Dieu<\/em>, did I have any standards<\/em>? I had nothing but<\/em>\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emma Garman has written about books and culture for\u00a0<\/em>Lapham\u2019s Quarterly Roundtable,\u00a0<\/em>Longreads,\u00a0<\/em>Newsweek,\u00a0<\/em>The Daily Beast,\u00a0<\/em>Salon,\u00a0<\/em>The Awl,\u00a0<\/em>Words without Borders, and other publications.\u00a0<\/em>She was the first writer of the Daily\u2019s\u00a0<\/a><\/em>Feminize Your Canon<\/a>\u00a0column<\/a><\/em>.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1048,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-148582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature by Emma Garman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"October 22, 2020 \u2013 Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1107\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"754\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Emma Garman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Emma Garman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"19 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Emma Garman\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb\"},\"headline\":\"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\"},\"wordCount\":3858,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson-1024x697.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Featured\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Arts & Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\",\"name\":\"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson-1024x697.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00\",\"description\":\"Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg\",\"width\":1107,\"height\":754},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb\",\"name\":\"Emma Garman\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Emma Garman\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egarman\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature","description":"Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature by Emma Garman","og_description":"October 22, 2020 \u2013 Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00","article_modified_time":"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1107,"height":754,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Emma Garman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Emma Garman","Est. reading time":"19 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/"},"author":{"name":"Emma Garman","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb"},"headline":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature","datePublished":"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00","dateModified":"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/"},"wordCount":3858,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson-1024x697.jpg","keywords":["Featured"],"articleSection":["Arts & Culture"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/","name":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson-1024x697.jpg","datePublished":"2020-10-22T15:52:27+00:00","dateModified":"2020-10-22T18:07:12+00:00","description":"Coeditors of \u2018The Little Review,\u2019 the two women were as passionate about art as they were about each other.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/heapandanderson.jpg","width":1107,"height":754},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/22\/the-lesbian-partnership-that-changed-literature\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Lesbian Partnership That Changed Literature"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/7cf3b32183da239f23c45d5821f1b9bb","name":"Emma Garman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/06336e82dc9b5ae57c415fa8c8cd3f37c927ef9579f0fbe2d5a7f8db9ca7c438?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Emma Garman"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/egarman\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1048"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148582"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":148594,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148582\/revisions\/148594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}