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Millicent Dillon was born Millicent Gerson in New York
City on May 24, 1925. Upon receiving a degree in physics from Hunter College in
1944, she held a series of technical-scientific positions. She worked as a junior
physicist on a government project at Princeton University from 1944-45. In 1946,
she
worked as a technical assistant for Standard Oil Company, and she again served
as an
assistant physicist on a government project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the
following year. From 1947-48, she served as a staff writer for the Association
of
Scientists for Atomic Education in New York and then worked as a physicist at
Northrup Aircraft. From 1949-52, she worked as a caseworker for a social welfare
program in Hawthorne, California. At the age of 40, Dillon enrolled in the creative
writing program at San Francisco State University. After receiving a master's
degree
in 1966, she taught creative writing as a professor of English at Foothill College
in Los Altos, California, for five years. From 1974 to 1983 she was an academic
writer for the Stanford University News and Publications office. Since 1983 Dillon
has been a freelance writer in fiction, biography, and drama. |
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Dillon is best known for her works concerning writers Jane and Paul Bowles. Among
these are a biography A Little Original Sin: The Life and
Works of Jane Bowles (1981); a collection of letters, Out in the World: Selected Letters of Jane Bowles
1935-1970 (1985); and a biography You Are Not I: A
Portrait of Paul Bowles (1998). She also edited The Viking Portable Paul and Jane Bowles (1994). Her other works
include Baby Perpetua and Other Stories (short
stories, 1971); The One in the Back is Medea, (novel,
1973); After Egypt: Isadora Duncan and Mary Cassatt
(biography, 1990); The Dance of the Mothers (novel,
1991); Harry Gold (novel, 2000); four plays; and
additional short stories, essays, and reviews in numerous publications. She is
the
recipient of a number of honors and awards, including five O. Henry awards in
fiction. She also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Additional information about
Millicent Dillon may be found in Contemporary Authors New
Revision Series (Gale Research Company, 1984). |
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Jane Auer Bowles was an author who published only one
novel, Two Serious Ladies (1943); one play, In the Summer House (1954); and a book of short stories,
Plain Pleasures (1966). The Collected Works of Jane Bowles (1966) combined her works in one
volume. My Sister's Hand in Mine (1978) is an
expanded edition of The Collected Works. A
posthumously published collection of stories and letters, Feminine Wiles, appeared in 1976. |
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The only child of Sidney and Claire Stajer Auer, Jane Stajer Auer was born February
22, 1917, in New York City. The Auer family moved to Woodmere, Long Island, when
Jane was ten years old. Upon her father's death in 1930, Jane and her mother
returned to New York City. In 1932, they moved to Leysin, Switzerland, for Jane
to
receive treatment for tuberculosis of the knee. After returning to New York in
1934,
Jane decided to be a writer; her first work, Le Phaéton
Hypocrite (manuscript lost), was completed in 1936. Jane married the
writer-composer Paul Bowles on February 21, 1938. Following their marriage, they
travelled to Latin America and Europe and briefly resided in New York. After 1948,
they lived in Tangier, Morocco, but continued to make frequent visits to Europe,
Latin America, and the United States. Although both were homosexual and they often
lived apart, the Bowleses' marriage endured until Jane's death in 1973. Among
their
wide circle of friends and acquaintances were literary, musical, and theatrical
figures, such as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, William S. Burroughs, Peggy
Guggenheim, and Virgil Thomson. Another important figure in Jane Bowles's life
was
her Arab housekeeper and lover, Cherifa. |
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Jane Bowles's active period as a writer only lasted for about ten years; she had
always experienced difficulty in writing, but by 1950 this difficulty, worsened
by
alcohol, had become a complete writer's block. In 1957, at the age of 39, Jane
Bowles suffered a severe stroke which left her with acute aphasia and vision
impairment. She made several attempts at writing but was unable to complete any
work. She also became heavily dependent on alcohol and prescription drugs. By
1967,
her mental and physical health had deteriorated so that Paul Bowles placed her
in a
psychiatric hospital in Málaga, Spain. The following year she was moved to the
Clínica de los Angeles in Málaga. In 1969, she returned to Tangier for four months
but had to be readmitted to the convent hospital. She became increasingly blind
and
unresponsive before she died on May 4, 1973. More information about Jane Bowles
may
be found in Millicent Dillon's A Little Original Sin: The
Life and Works of Jane Bowles (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1981). |
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Paul Frederick Bowles, who was born December 30, 1910, in
New York City, was the only child of Claude Dietz and Rena Winnewisser Bowles.
Bowles began writing short stories and composing music as a child, and he was
only a
teenager when his surrealist poetry was published in the magazine transition. Bowles briefly attended the University of
Virginia but dropped out in 1929 and moved to Paris. This began over forty years
of
nearly constant traveling for Bowles, who once said of himself that he was addicted
to movement. He returned to the University of Virginia in the spring of 1930,
but
left again after one semester to study music under Aaron Copland. In 1931, Bowles
returned to Europe. From Paris he went to Berlin and then, at Gertrude Stein's
suggestion, he went to Tangier, Morocco, for a time. After returning to the United
States, Bowles studied with Virgil Thomson. In 1937, Bowles met author and
playwright Jane Auer; they were married the following year. The Bowleses eventually
settled in Tangier, although both travelled often throughout North Africa, Europe,
Latin America, and the United States. At one point Paul even owned Taprobane,
an
island in Sri Lanka. |
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Paul Bowles became a celebrated composer during the 1940s, providing the musical
scores for such noted plays as My Heart's in the
Highlands (1940), South Pacific (1943), and
The Glass Menagerie (1945). He also composed the
scores for ballets, including Yankee Clipper. At the
same time, Bowles wrote travel books on America, Mexico, France, India, and North
Africa. From 1942-45, he worked as a music critic for the New
York Herald-Tribune. He wrote translations from French and Spanish for
View, and his translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Huis Clos was published as No Exit in 1946. After reading his wife's Two
Serious Ladies (1943), Bowles was inspired to write fiction. He
contributed short stories to Harper's Bazaar, View, Mademoiselle, and
Partisan Review. Bowles's first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949), was a best-seller, and it
remains his most critically acclaimed work. Over the next decade, Bowles wrote
three
more novels and developed a reputation as an existential novelist. In 1956, he
began
translating Moroccan literature. In the 1960s and 1970s, Bowles primarily translated
Moghrebi novels, short stories, and folk tales in collaboration with Mohammed
Mrabet. He also returned to writing poetry. In 1970, he founded the literary
magazine Antaeus with Daniel Halpern. Jane Bowles's
mental and physical health deteriorated after she suffered a stroke in 1957, and
she
spent the final years of her life in a hospital in Spain before dying in 1973.
During those years, Paul Bowles ceased to write fiction. In the years since his
wife's death, Paul Bowles has remained in Morocco; he has received two NEH
fellowships and has begun writing fiction again. More information about Paul Bowles
may be found in his autobiography Without Stopping
(Putnam, 1972). |
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The HRC purchased a portion of the Millicent Dillon papers in 1990 and received the
remainder of the collection as a gift from Dillon in 1991. |
