Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner’s letters from Paris, written for the New Yorker under the pen name Genet, were widely read over a fifty-year span, which began shortly after the magazine’s founding and continued until her retirement in 1975. Her crisp, elegant, and authoritative observations on European cultural, social, and political life made her one of the most respected journalists of her day. Now, through the hundreds of letters she wrote to her intimate friend, Natalia Danesi Murray, the witty and tender spirit behind her impersonal style for the New Yorker emerges in correspondence between two women from two different cultures living on two continents, yet entirely devoted to each other. The record of this extraordinary friendship has been amplified by Mrs. Murray’s moving narrative of their life together and apart, revealing a gifted, loving, and noble individual who left an indelible image of a fascinating era.
