Kay Boyle

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Kay Boyle (1902-1992) in 1944. Photo by Al Ravenna, New York World-Telegram. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Kay Boyle
Born	February 19, 1902(1902-Template:MONTHNUMBER-19) St. Paul, Minnesota, United States
Died	December 27, 1992(1992-Template:MONTHNUMBER-27) (aged 90) Mill Valley, California, United States
Nationality	American
Spouse(s)	Richard Brault, Ernest Walsh, Laurence Vail, Baron Joseph von Franckenstein

Kay Boyle (February 19, 1902 - December 27, 1992) was an American poet and prose writer, and a political activist.

Life

Youth

The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She grew up in several cities but primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father, Howard Peterson Boyle, was a lawyer, but her greatest influence came from her mother, Katherine Evans, a literary and social activist who believed that the wealthy had an obligation to help the less well off.

Boyle was educated at the exclusive Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, then studied architecture at the Ohio Mechanics Institute in Cincinnati. Interested in the arts, she studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922 where she found work as a writer and editor with a small magazine.

Marriages and family life

That same year, she met and married a French exchange student, Richard Brault, and moved to France in 1923. This resulted in her staying in Europe for the better part of the next twenty years. Separated from her husband, she formed a relationship with magazine editor Ernest Walsh, with whom she had a daughter (born after Walsh had died of consumption).

In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was then married to Peggy Guggenheim. Boyle and Vail lived together from 1929 to 1932 when, following their divorces, they married.

With Vail, Boyle had 3 daughters: Apple Joan (born 1929), Kathe (born 1934), and Clover (born 1939).

During her years in France, Boyle was associated with several innovative literary magazines and made friends with many of the writers and artists living in Paris around Montparnasse. Among her friends were Harry and Caresse Crosby, who owned Black Sun Press, and published her first work of fiction, a collection titled Short Stories. They became such good friends that in 1928 Harry Crosby cashed in some stock dividends to help Boyle pay for an abortion. Other friends included Eugene and Maria Jolas. Kay Boyle also wrote for transition, one of the preeminent literary publications of the day. A poet as well as a novelist, her early writings often reflected her lifelong search for true love as well as her interest in the power relationships between men and women.

In 1936, she wrote a novel titled Death of a Man, an attack on the growing threat of Narzism, but at that time, no one in America was listening.

In 1943, following her divorce from Laurence Vail, she married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein with whom she had 2 children. After having lived in France, Austria, England, and Germany after World War II, Boyle returned to the United States.

McCarthyism and later life

Dangerous Kay Boyle (Sample Reel 12 28 13)

In later years Kay Boyle championed integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.

In the United States, Boyle and her husband were victims of early 1950s McCarthyism. Her husband was dismissed by Roy Cohn from his post in the Public Affairs Division of the U.S. State Department, and Boyle lost her position as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for 6 years. She was blacklisted by most of the major magazines. During this period, her life and writing became increasingly political.

In the early 1960s, Boyle and her husband lived in Rowayton, Connecticut, where he taught at a private girls' school. He was then rehired by the State Department and posted to Iran, but died shortly thereafter in 1963. Boyle was a writer in residence at the New York City Writer's Conference at Wagner College in 1962. In 1963, she accepted a creative writing position on the faculty of San Francisco State College where she remained until 1979.

During this period she became heavily involved in political activism, championing integration and civil rights. She also advocated banning nuclear weapons, and American withdrawal from the Vietnam War.. She traveled to Cambodia in 1966 as part of the "Americans Want to Know" fact-seeking mission. She participated in numerous protests, and in 1967 was arrested twice and imprisoned. In 1968, she signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In her later years, she became an active supporter of Amnesty International and worked for the NAACP. After retiring from San Francisco State College, Boyle held several writer-in-residence positions for brief periods of time.

Boyle died at a California seniors home in Mill Valley, California, in 1992.

Writing

In her lifetime Boyle published more than 40 books, including 14 novels, 8 volumes of poetry, 11 collections of short fiction, 3 children's books, and French to English translations and essays.

Recognition

Boyle's short stories won 2 O. Henry Awards. In addision she received 2 Guggenheim Fellowships, and was given a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

She was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

A comprehensive assessment of Boyle's life and work was published in 1986 titled Kay Boyle: Artist and activist by Sandra Whipple Spanier. In 1994 Joan Mellen published a voluminous biography of Kay Boyle, Kay Boyle: Author of herself.

Publications

Poetry

• Landscape for Wyn Henderson. London: privately printed, 1931.
• A Statement. New York: Modern Editions Press, 1932.
• A Glad Day. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1938.
• American Citizen Naturalized in Leadville, Colorado: A poem. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944.
• Collected Poems. New York: Knopf, 1962.
• The Lost Dogs of Phnom Penh. Two Windows, 1968.
• Testament for My Students, and other poems. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970.
• A Poem for February First, 1975. San Francisco: Quercus Press, 1975.
• A Poem for Vida Hadjebi Tabrizi. New York: Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran, 1975.
• A Poem for Muriel Rukeyser. Chicago: Lovell & White, 1978.
• This Is Not a Letter, and other poems. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1985.
• Collected Poems. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 1991.

Novels

• Process: A novel (written in 1925). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001.
• Plagued by the Nightingale. New York, London, & Toronto: Cape, 1931; Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1966.
• Year Before Last. New York: H. Smith / R. Hass, 1932; London: Faber, 1932; Carbondale, Southern Illinois University Press, 1969.
• Gentlemen, I Address You Privately. New York: H. Smith / R. Hass, 1933; London: Faber, 1934; Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1991.
• My Next Bride. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1934.
• Death of a Man: A novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936; New York: New Directions, 1989.
• Monday Night. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1938.
• The Crazy Hunter: Three short novels (The Crazy Hunter / The Bridegroom's Body / Decision). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940; London: Faber, 1940
  • also published as *Three Short Novels. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958.
• Primer for Combat. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1942.
• Avalanche: A novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1944.
• A Frenchman Must Die. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946.
• 1939: A novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1948.
• His Human Majesty. New York: Whittlesey House / McGraw-Hill, 1949.
• The Seagull on the Step. New York: Knopf, 1955.
• Generation Without Farewell. New York: Knopf, 1960.
• The Underground Woman. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975.
• The Crazy Hunter (edited by Doris Gumbach). New York: New Directions, 1993.

Short fiction

• Short Stories. Paris: Black Sun Press, 1929.
• Wedding Day and Other Stories. New York: J. Cape & H. Smith, 1930; London: Pharos Editions, 1932; Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1972.
• The First Lover and Other Stories. New York: H. Smith & R. Hass, 1933.
• The White Horses of Vienna, and other stories. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936.
• Thirty Stories. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1946.
• The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Postwar Germany. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951.
• also published as The Smoking Mountain: Stories of Germany during the occupation. New York: Knopf, 1963.
• Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.
• Fifty Stories. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980.
• Life Being the Best, and other stories (edited by Sandra Whipple Spanier). New York: New Directions, 1988.

Non-fiction

• Relations & Complications. Being the Recollections of H.H. The Dayang Muda of Sarawak. (1929), Forew. by T.P. O'Connor. (Ghost-written)
• Breaking the Silence: Why a mother tells her son about the Nazi era. New York : Institute of Human Relations Press / American Jewish Committee, 1962.
• "The Last Rim of The World," in "Why Work Series" editor Gordon Lish (1966)
• Being Geniuses Together, 1920-1930 (with Robert McAlmon). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968
  • revised edition. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
• The Long Walk at San Francisco State, and other essays. New York: Grove Press, 1970.
• Four Visions of America (1977) (with others)
• Words That Must Somehow Be Said: Selected essays, 1927-1984 (edited by Elizabeth Bell). San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985.

Juvenile

• The Youngest Camel. Boston & London: Little, Brown, 1939
  • revised as The Youngest Camel: Reconsidered and rewritten. New York: Harper, 1959; London: Faber, 1959.
• Pinky, the Cat Who Liked to Sleep (illustrated by Lillian Obligado). New York: Crowell-Collier, 1966.
• Pinky in Persia (illustrated by Lillian Obligado). New York: Crowell-Collier, 1968.
• Winter Night. Mankato, MN: Creative Education, 1993.

Edited

• 365 Days (short story anthology; edited with Laurence Vail & Nina Conarain). New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1936; London: Cape, 1936.
• Enough of Dying: Voices for peace (edited by Justine van Gundy). New York: Dell, 1972.

Letters

• Kay Boyle: A twentieth-century life in letters (edited by Sandra Whipple Spanier). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• Poets of the Lost Generation
• List of U.S. poets

References

Fonds

• Kay Boyle Collection a the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
• Manuscripts and correspondence in Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University
• Kay Boyle Papers, 1914-1987, Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Morris Library has the Ruby Cohn collection of Kay Boyle letters and the Alice L. Kahler collection of Kay Boyle letters.

External links

Poems

• "Monody to the Sound of Zithers" in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922
• Kay Boyle at The PIP (Project for Innovative Poetry) Blog: profile & poem, "In Defense of Homosexuality"

Prose

• New York Review of Books, articles by Kay Boyle

Audio /video

• Kay Boyle at YouTube

Books

• Kay Boyle at Amazon.com

About

• Kay Boyle in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Boyle, Kay (1902-1992) in Women in World History: A biographical encyclopedia
• Kay Boyle at Ohioana Authors
• Kay Boyle (1902-1992)) at Modern American Poetry
• "The Tortured Children of Laurence 'the King of Bohemia' Vail," at Please Kill Me