Lot Essay
Born in 1892 in Indianapolis to a Quaker family, Janet Flanner attended the University of Chicago from 1912-1914. She worked for the Indianapolis Star during World War I and then traveled throughout Europe, settling in Paris in 1922. In 1925, she was hired by her friend, Harold Ross to write a periodic "Letter from Paris" for his new magazine, The New Yorker. She worked as the magazine's Paris correspondent from 1925 to 1975. Using the pseudonym "Gent", Flanner's articles touched on French life of the period including art, theatre and politics. During the 1930s, she also began to write a periodic "Letter from London". During the war years, 1939-1944, she continued her work for the magazine from New York City. After the war she returned to Europe, where she lived until 1975 when she moved back to New York. She died there in 1978. Many of her essays were collected in American in Paris: Profile of an Interlude Between Two Wars (1940); Paris Journal, 1965-1971 (1971); and Janet Flanner's World: Uncollected Writings 1932-1975 (1979).