Scope and Content Note
The papers of Janet Flanner (1892-1975) and her companion, Solita Solano (1888-1975), span the years circa 1870-1976, although the bulk of the material is concentrated in the last two decades of that period. The collection, which reflects Flanner's and Solano's personal lives as well as professional careers as journalists, writers, and literary editors, includes correspondence, writings, clippings, and other items arranged in various series.
In the General Correspondence series are many letters of a personal nature from close friends, primarily other authors sharing personal tribulations, the struggle toward production of literary works, and the evaluation of the creative efforts of others. Noteworthy among the correspondents are Margaret Anderson, Djuna Barnes, Sybille Bedford, Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), Kay Boyle, Nancy Cunard, and Daphné Fielding. Some of the letters also discuss friends and associates such as Ernest Hemingway, George Moore, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein. Many are from people in their late years reflecting on the problems of old age and on the final illnesses of Margaret Anderson, Karen Blixen, Dorothy Caruso, Georgette Leblanc.
The Subject File consists primarily of printed matter but also includes various letters and writings, the most prominent of which are from Kathryn Hulme concerning the Russian mystic Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff and the foundation established to carry on his work. There are also notations by Solita Solano of private meetings with Gurdjieff and notes from formal lectures on subjects such as truth, essence and personality, fasting, liberation, and symbolism.
The Writings File consists chiefly of the drafts, galley proofs, and printed copies of books and articles by Flanner, Solano, and members of their literary circle. Twenty volumes of selected articles by Flanner from The New Yorker, 1927-1964, also include letters, newspaper clippings, typescripts of radio programs, and articles from other magazines. Of particular interest is a fragmentary memoir by Solano titled "The Hotel Napoleon Bonaparte." An edition of this work by John C. Broderick, with a provenance essay, has been published in the Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress, v. 34, October 1977. In describing Solano's reminiscences, Broderick wrote that they "recall what it was like to live in Paris between the wars, in an avant-garde cultural circle notable alike for its creativity and its eccentric ways."
In addition to the writings of Flanner and Solano, the files contain works by Aragon, Karen Blixen, Kay Boyle, Nancy Cunard, Georgette Leblanc, and Monica Stirling. Title pages and inscriptions of published volumes transferred to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library have been reproduced and filed with this series.
The Papers of Associates series comprises letters to Margaret Anderson, Geraldine Balayé, Elizabeth Jenks Clark, and Monica Stirling from such figures as Aragon, Karen Blixen, Colette, Nancy Cunard, Pierre de Massot, Ezra Pound, Man Ray, Carl Sandburg, Edith Sitwell, Alice B. Toklas, Carl Van Vechten, E.B. White, and William Carlos Williams.
Complementing the more personal items relating to Flanner and Solano are clippings, certificates and awards, invitations, passports, wills, and other material found in the Miscellany series.
The Scrapbooks consist of six volumes which originally contained numerous photographs of families and friends, letters, poems, clippings, and miscellaneous items. These volumes were microfilmed and dismantled, and the photographs transferred to the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library. These images, some of which were taken by noted photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Henri Cartier Bresson, and Carl Van Vechten, are primarily of close friends including Margaret Anderson, Karen Blixen, Dorothy Caruso, Nancy Cunard, Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff, Noel Murphy, and Olga Petrova. Letters and other writings, interfiled with like material in the collection, augment files for André Malraux, Marianne Moore, Raymond Mortimer, Harold W. Ross, William Shawn, Rebecca West, Thornton Wilder, and Alexander Woollcott. Clippings and miscellaneous material remain in the dismantled scrapbooks.