Partner Janet Flanner,
Elizabeth Jenks Clark
Queer Places:
Orgeval, 78630 Orgeval, Francia
Solita
Solano (1888 – 22 November 1975), born Sarah Wilkinson, was an American
writer, poet and journalist. Solita Solano
supported her lover,
Margaret Anderson, founder of the Little Review, and Margaret’s other
lover, the soprano
Georgette Leblanc, out of her own meagre funds.
Djuna Barnes wrote a lively
bagatelle called Ladies Almanack in 1928.
Natalie Barney
featured here as Dame Evangeline Musset;
Romaine Brooks as Cynic Sal;
Lily de Gramont as
the Duchesse Clitoressa of Natescourt;
Una
Troubridge as Lady Buck-and-Balk;
Radclyffe Hall as Tilly Tweed-in-blood;
Mina Loy as Patience Scalpel;
Mimì Franchetti as
Senorita Fly-About; and Janet
Flanner and Solita Solano as Nip
and Tuck. The book was privately published by
Robert McAlmon.
Sarah Wilkinson came from a middle-class family and attended the Emma
Willard School in Troy, New York. After the death of her father, she left home
and married her childhood sweetheart Oliver Filley. They spent the next four
years in the Philippines, in China and in Japan, where her husband worked as
an engineer. They returned to New York in 1908, where she started work as a
theatre critic and drama editor with the New York Tribune and as a freelance
contributor to the National Geographic Society.[1]
At this time she changed her name to Solita Solano.
In 1919, Solano got to know the journalist Janet Flanner
in Greenwich Village with whom she started a relationship.[2]
In 1921 they travelled to Greece, where Janet was to work on a report for
National Geographic on Constantinople. Solano had three books published, and
as they were not very successful, returned to journalism. In 1922, they
travelled to France, and in Paris they joined the intellectuel-lesbian circle
of Gertrude Stein and
Alice B.
Toklas,
Natalie Clifford Barney,
Romaine Brooks and
Djuna Barnes.
In 1929, Solano had an affair with
Margaret Anderson, founder of The Little Review, who had come to Paris
with her lover, French singer
Georgette Leblanc. The affair lasted several years, though Anderson
remained living with Leblanc.[3]
Solita Solano by Berenice Abbott
While in Paris, Janet Flanner started writing, under the Pseudonym Genêt,
the Letter from Paris, for The New Yorker. After the outbreak of
World War II Solano and Flanner returned to New York.[3]
A few years later Solano left Flanner after Flanner started an affair with
Natalia Danesi Murray; meanwhile Solano fell in love with
Elizabeth Jenks Clark. Margaret Anderson got to know Clark through Solano
after Clark returned to the US. Clark and Solano became Anderson's closest
friends, although Anderson had in the meantime fallen in love with
Dorothy Caruso, widow of the
singer Enrico Caruso.
During the 1930s and 40s, Solano studied with G. I. Gurdjieff, and for a
while acted as his secretary. She was a member of a key Gurdjieff group known
as "The Rope," to which
Jane Heap, Margaret Anderson, and
Kathryn Hulme
also belonged. After Gurdjieff's death in 1949, Solano became the focal point
for members of The Rope until her own death. Her notes of Gurdjieff's meetings
with The Rope are a remarkable record of his personality and method.[4]
After the war Solano returned to France, where she died at the age of 87.[3]
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solita_Solano
- Woods, Gregory. Homintern . Yale University Press. Edizione del
Kindle.