Traces the life of an early American feminist who became the center of an avant-garde movement concerned with art, politics, and social reform

Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds

Rudnick, Lois Palken

Biographies & Memoirs

Univ of New Mexico Pr

She was "the most peculiar common denominator that society, literature, art and radical revolutionaries ever found in New York and Europe." So claimed a Chicago newspaper reporter in the 1920s of Mabel Dodge Luhan, who attracted leading literary and intellectual figures to her circle for over four decades. Not only was she mistress of a grand salon, an American Madame de Stael, she was also a leading symbol of the New Woman: sexually emancipated, self-determining, and in control of her destiny. In many ways, her life is the story of America's emergence from the Victorian age.
Lois Rudnick has written a unique and definitive biography that examines all aspects of Mabel Dodge Luhan's real and imagined lives, drawing on fictional portraits of Mabel, including those by D. H. Lawrence, Carl Van Vechten, and Gertrude Stein, as well as on Mabel's own voluminous memoirs, letters, and fiction. Rudnick not only assesses Mabel as muse to men of genius but also considers her seriously as a writer, activist, and spirit of the age.
This biography will appeal not just to cultural historians but to any woman who has loved and lived with men who are artists and rebels. Both as a liberated woman and as a legend, Mabel Dodge Luhan embodies the cultural forces that shaped modern America.

Community & Culture

University of New Mexico Press

Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture

Mabel Dodge Luhan, hostess and visionary, made Taos, New Mexico, a center for artists and utopians when she moved there in 1917 and began inviting friends to visit her. Utopian Vistas is a chronicle of the house Mabel Dodge Luhan built in Taos and the poets, painters, photographers, filmmakers, writers, educators, and visionaries whose lives and works were affected by the house and its environs. Skillfully combining scholarship and a gift for storytelling, author Lois Rudnick weaves a complex tapestry depicting American counter-cultures in New Mexico from the 1920s to the 1990s. Against a backdrop of Southwest scenery, Indian and Hispanic cultures, and expatriate Anglos, the story of the Mabel Dodge Luhan house unfolds from its inception in 1918 to its modern-day incarnation as a center for alternate education. Meticulous architectural descriptions are juxtaposed with insightful comments on the personalities - from D. H. Lawrence and Georgia O'Keeffe to Dennis Hopper and George McGovern - who have owned or visited the Luhan property. Inter-ethnic strife and ongoing poverty, hippies and Chicano radicals, gifted artisans and doped-up geniuses, mystics and ghosts mingle together in this compelling story of the house that Mabel built.

History

Americas

At last edited into one volume, the story of one of 20th-century America's most flamboyant women, from her youth in upper-class Buffalo to her "discovery" of New Mexico.

Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan

Luhan, Mabel Dodge

Mabel Dodge Luhan, hostess and visionary, made Taos, New Mexico, a center for artists and utopians when she moved there in 1917 and began inviting friends to visit her. Now available in paperback, Utopian Vistas is a chronicle of the house Luhan built in Taos and the poets, painters, photographers, film-makers, writers, educators, and visionaries whose lives and works were affected by the house and its environs. Lois Rudnick weaves a complex tapestry depicting American countercultures in New Mexico from the 1920s to the 1990s.
 "Should be required reading for art historians,film historians, ex-Beats and hippies, their children and grandchildren, and anyone interested in the possibility of making an imperfect America perfect at last."--Karal Ann Marling

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Cady Wells (1904–1954) was one of the most innovative modern artists to work within the Santa Fe and Taos colonies in the years between 1932 and 1954, and one of the finest American watercolorists. This full-scale retrospective of his work includes essays that explore Wells's art and life, including his intimate friendship with Martha Graham.

Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism

Individual Artists

Museum of New Mexico Press

Book by Smith, Judith E., Rudnick, Lois Palken

Instructor's Guide for American Identities

Politics & Social Sciences

Smith, Judith E.

Social Sciences

Blackwell Pub.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rudnick, Lois Palken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rudnick, Lois Palken

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rudnick, Lois Palken. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds

Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds

Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture

Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan

Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture

Cady Wells and Southwestern Modernism

Instructor's Guide for American Identities