"Langer makes clear that Romaine Brooks was an artist of unusual courage and originality, tracing her development not only as an artist, but as a woman artist and a boldly lesbian artist. This biography includes fascinating material on the many talented, independent, and liberated women in Paris in the 1920s, with Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks at the center of that milieu." —Jerry Rosco, author of Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography
"Cassandra Langer insightfully recounts the life of Romaine Brooks, including the sources of her creativity and blocks to that creativity in later life, her bigotry, and her contributions to twentieth-century British, merican, and French culture. This readable, vivid biography provides social and general historical context for Brooks's life, art, and writings, as well as incisive psychological analysis of her motives."—Betsy Draine, author of Substance under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris Lessing
“Art historian Langer is zealous and exacting as she seeks to fully portray her heretofore too-little-known subject, . . . addressing the complexities and contradictions of Brooks’s life and celebrating the courage and power of her meticulously composed paintings. . . . Langer sensitively grapples with Brooks’s elitism, bigotry, and fascist tendencies while avidly reclaiming this ‘fascinating and controversial’ artist’s elegant and evocative, haunted and defiant art in praise of audacious women.”—Booklist, *starred review