Harry Crosby

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Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby (June 4, 1898 – December 10, 1929) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
heir, bon vivant, poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, and for some, an exemplar of the Lost Generation

Lost Generation

The 'Lost Generation' is a phrase made popular by American author Ernest Hemingway in his first published novel The Sun Also Rises. Often it is used to refer to a group of United States literary notables who lived in Paris and other parts of Europe, some after military service in the World War I....
in American literature.

Born Henry Sturgis Crosby (his parents later changed his middle name to "Grew") in Boston

Boston, Massachusetts

Boston is the State capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is considered the economic and cultural center of the region, and is sometimes regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England." Boston city proper had a 2007 est...
's exclusive Back Bay neighborhood, he was the son of one of the richest banking families in New England

New England

New England is a region of the United States located in the northeastern corner of the country, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and New York State, and consisting of the modern U.S....
and the nephew of the son of J.P. Morgan

J. P. Morgan

John Pierpont Morgan was an United States financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time....
, the financier

Financier

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Encyclopedia

Harry Crosby (June 4, 1898 – December 10, 1929) was an American

United States

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry....
, and for some, an exemplar of the Lost Generation

Lost Generation

Boston, Massachusetts

New England

J. P. Morgan

John Pierpont Morgan was an United States financier, banker and art collector who dominated corporate finance and industrial consolidation during his time....
, the financier

Financier

Financier is a term for a person who handles large sums of money, usually involving loan, financing projects, large-scale investment, or large-scale money management....
. As such, he was heir to a substantial family fortune. Profoundly affected by his experiences as a volunteer ambulance driver in World war I, Crosby abandoned all pretence of living the expected life of a privileged Bostonian. Instead, he moved to Paris with his wife and together they devoted themselves to art and poetry.

During World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, Harry Crosby said he wanted to escape "the horrors of Boston and particularly of Boston virgins" and volunteered with the American Field Service in France, serving at the Front as a driver in the dangerous ambulance service. On November 22, 1917, a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
shell seriously wounded a man standing next to Crosby. As Crosby drove several wounded soldiers to a medical aid station, his ambulance was destroyed by artillery fire. Miraculously, Crosby was unhurt. He declared later that that was the night he changed from a boy to a man.

In 1921 Crosby married Mary Phelps Jacob

Mary Phelps Jacob

Mary Phelps Jacob was a poet, publisher, peace activist, and a New York socialite. She was instrumental in publishing some of the early works of important authors including James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, D....
, who later changed her name to Caresse. Two days after their wedding, they moved to Paris, France, where he worked in his uncle's bank. Uninterested in a banker's life and desiring to pursue life as a poet, Crosby quit his job at the Morton Harjes Bank and in April 1927 he and wife Caresse founded a book publishing company. Originally named Éditions Narcisse, it was later changed to the Black Sun Press

Black Sun Press

Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as ?ditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby , who at the time were expatriates living in Paris....
. By 1928, Harry Crosby had gained some recognition as a poet after the publishing of his Red Skeletons collection said to be heavily indebted to Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Pierre Baudelaire was a nineteenth century French poetry, critic and translator. A controversial figure in his lifetime, Baudelaire's name has become a byword for literary and artistic Decadent movement....
and Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American poet, Short story writer, Editing and Literary criticism, and is considered part of the American Romanticism. Best known for his tales of Mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the Detective fiction genre....
.

The Black Sun Press produced finely crafted books in small editions, including works by, among others, D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, writer and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the modernism school of poetry. He has received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work....
, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Ireland expatriate author of the 20th century. He is best known for his landmark novel Ulysses and its controversial successor Finnegans Wake , as well as the short story collection Dubliners and the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ....
, Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle

Kay Boyle, born February 19, 1902 in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States ? died December 27, 1992 in Mill Valley, California, was an award-winning writer, educator, and political activist....
, and Hart Crane

Hart Crane

Harold Hart Crane was an United States poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote poetry that was traditional in form, difficult and often Archaism in language, and which sought to express something more than the ironic despair that Crane found in Eliot's poetry....
. It also issued two more volumes of Crosby's poetry, Chariot of the Sun and Transit of Venus. In 1929, Crosby published Mad Queen, a collection of verse influenced by Surrealism

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early-1920s, and is best known for the visual artworks and writings of the group members....
that includes withering attacks on Bostonian tradition. Torchbearer, a collection of his poetry with an afterward by Ezra Pound, and Aphrodite in Flight, a meditation on love and the principles of aeronautics, were both published posthumously. A boxed set containing Chariot of the Sun with D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an England author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization....
's intro, Transit of Venus
Transit of Venus

A transit of Venus across the Sun takes place when the planet Venus passes directly between the Sun and Earth, obscuring a small portion of the solar disk....
with T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

'Thomas Stearns Eliot', Order of Merit , was a poet, dramatist, and literary critic. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. Among his most famous writings are the poems The Love Song of J....
's intro, Sleeping Together with Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert

Stuart Gilbert was an English literary scholar and translator. Among his translations into English are works by Andr? Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry, Georges Simenon, Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre....
's intro and Torchbearer was brought out in 1931.

On December 10, 1929, Crosby and Josephine Bigelow, née Rotch, a newly married woman with whom Crosby had been carrying on an affair, committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"....
. Some Crosby scholars maintain that Harry shot Josephine and several hours later shot himself. Others suggest that Josephine shot herself first, leaving Crosby little choice but to follow suit. Regardless of the exact details, Crosby's death, particularly the macabre circumstances under which it occurred, scandalised Boston's Back Bay society.

Following her husband's death, Caresse Crosby edited his papers and continued the work of the Black Sun Press. She published and translated some of the works of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short story author, and journalist. He was part of the 1920s expatriate community in Paris, France, and one of the veterans of World War I later known as "the Lost Generation"....
, William Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize in Literature-winning United States author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short story....
, Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was an American writer and poet, best known for her caustic wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles.From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary output in such venues as The New Yorker and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group she later...
and others, as well as volumes of poetry (Crosses of Gold (Léon Pichon, 1925), Painted Shores (Black Sun Press, 1927), Poems for Harry Crosby (Black Sun Press, 1931)). Alvin Redman published her autobiography, Passionate Years, in 1955.

Bibiliography

Minkoff, George Robert. A Bibliography of the Black Sun Press ... With an introduction by Caresse Crosby. (Great Neck, N.Y.: G. R. Minkoff, 1970)

External links

Harry Crosby tribute site from
from the Oldpoetry.com Archives