Jean Strouse
Jean Strouse (born 1945) is an American biographer, cultural historian, essayist, and critic. She is best known for her biographies of diarist Alice James and financier J. Pierpont Morgan, and a book about the artist John Singer Sargent and his greatest private patron, the eminent London art dealer Asher Wertheimer.
Life
[edit]Strouse graduated from Radcliffe College in 1967.[1] She worked as an editorial assistant at The New York Review of Books (NYRB) from 1967 to 1969.[2] She was a book critic at Newsweek magazine from 1979 to 1983, and won a MacArthur Fellowship in September 2001. She has also held fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has contributed reviews and essays on literary and other topics to the New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Vogue and other publications. In 2003 Strouse was appointed the Sue Ann and John Weinberg Director of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, a position she held until 2017.
Strouse's book Alice James: A Biography, appeared in 1980 and won a Bancroft Prize. A sympathetic but objective look at the younger sister of philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, the biography showed how Alice James struggled with various "nervous" illnesses and wrote a remarkable diary. Strouse's next book, Morgan: American Financier (1999), earned praise for its realistic portrayal of Morgan's personality, its explanations of complex financial topics in understandable terms, and its vivid depictions of the social and cultural dynamics of the Gilded Age. Strouse has also edited two books by Henry James: the Library of America's edition of James' 1864–74 short stories, and the NYRB edition of James' last completed novel, The Outcry. Her 2024 book, Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers, deals with the relationships between John Singer Sargent and the family of Asher Wertheimer, a wealthy London art dealer who commissioned Sargent to paint twelve portraits of his large family.[3]
Works
[edit]- Strouse, Jean (1980). Alice James, a Biography. Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-27787-4.
- — (1999). Morgan: American Financier. Random House. ISBN 978-0-375-50166-1.
- — (2024). Family Romance: John Singer Sargent and the Wertheimers. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-374-61568-0. Retrieved December 22, 2024.
References
[edit]- ^ Bumiller, Elisabeth (April 6, 1999). "Public Lives; Scholar's Stormy Life With Morgan's Ghost". The New York Times. Retrieved February 24, 2018.
- ^ "The Amazing Human Launching Pads". "Who Runs New York", New York, September 26, 2010
- ^
- Balint, Benjamin (November 15, 2024). "Family Romance Review: John Singer Sargent and His Patrons". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 22, 2024.
- Mimms, Walker (November 21, 2024). "John Singer Sargent Painted Them. London Society Talked". The New York Times. Retrieved November 21, 2024.
- Smee, Sebastian (November 24, 2024). "A full portrait of John Singer Sargent and his patrons". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 22, 2024.
External links
[edit]- Conversation with Hernan Diaz about Family Romance at the New York Public Library, November 19, 2024
- Conversation on YouTube with Stacy Schiff about Family Romance at the New York Society Library, December 9, 2024
- Appearances on C-SPAN
