Charles Lutwidge Dodgson – ‘Lewis Carroll’ as he was to become known – was born into a comfortable middle class family, on January 27 1832, the son of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, of Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and his wife Frances Jane. He was the third child, and first son of … Read the rest
Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on 24th September, 1897. The dichotomy he was to find within himself in later life – half wide-eyed boy from the mid- West, half upper-class socialite – was in evidence from his birth. His father was from a well-to-do family which … Read the rest
Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte into a wealthy Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. Cocteau’s father had a lasting influence on his son. According to psychoanalytical critics this tragic event also created his awareness of human weakness which … Read the rest
Gertrude Stein and her brother Leo were among the first collectors of works by the Cubists and other experimental painters of the period, such as Pablo Picasso (who painted her portrait), Henri Matisse, and Georges Braque, several of whom became her friends. At her salon they mingled with expatriate American … Read the rest
