Alice Adams
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Mexico: Some Travels and Some Travelers There (nonfiction). New York: Prentice Hall, 1990.
Caroline’s Daughters (novel). New York: Knopf, 1991.
Almost Perfect (novel). New York: Knopf, 1993.
A Southern Exposure (novel). New York: Knopf, 1995.
Medicine Men (novel). New York: Knopf, 1997.
The Last Lovely City (stories). New York: Knopf, 1999.
After the War (novel). New York: Knopf, 2000.
The Stories of Alice Adams (stories). New York: Knopf, 2002.
The Stories of Alice Adams, with an introduction by Victoria Wilson (stories). New York: Vintage, 2019.
UNCOLLECTED WORKS CITED IN THIS BIOGRAPHY
“Arabel’s List.” Ploughshares 24, no. 2–3 (Fall 1998): 76–84.
“At First Sight: Love and Liking, a Memoir.” Southern Review 35 (Summer 1999): 567–78.
“At the Races.” Crosscurrents: A Quarterly, “Selections” (1989): 70–88.
“Balcony Scenes: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Movie Romantic.” American Film 16 (March 1991): 76.
“The Best Revenge.” Boulevard 13, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 82–91.
“Breakfast at Louie’s Café.” Key West Review (1989).
[Comment]. In American Voices: Best Short Fiction by Contemporary Authors with Comments by the Authors, ed. Sally Arteseros. New York: Hyperion, 1992, 1.
“Complicities.” Michigan Quarterly Review 34 (Summer 1995): 324–29.
“First Date.” Redbook 193, no. 2 (August 1999).
“Frida Kahlo’s Passion.” Art & Antiques 6, no. 1 (January 1989): 58–67, 98.
“Great Sex.” Southwest Review 83, no. 4 (1998): 512–19.
“Henry and the Pale-Faced Indian.” Cosmopolitan 163, no. 4 (October 1967): 146–50.
“Her Unmentionables.” Yale Review 87, no. 4 (October 1999): 44–51.
“Introduction.” In Best American Short Stories of 1991, ed. Alice Adams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991, xiii–xvii.
“The Last Married Man,” Virginia Quarterly Review 54, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 289–396.
The Lila Stories, in addition to four collected in The Last Lovely City: “Answering Machines.” Unpublished typescript, HRC.
“At the Races.” Crosscurrents “Selections” 8, no. 3 (1989): 70–85.
“The Grape Arbor.” Crosscurrents “Selections” 8, no. 3 (1989): 52–69.
“Time Alone.” New Yorker (August 4, 1986): 28–36.
“Love and Work.” Southwest Review 77, no. 4 (Autumn 1992): 466–79.
“Madeline and Me.” Life 13 (July 1990): 103.
“A Natural Woman.” Allure [1991 or 1992, original not located].
“The Nice Girl.” McCall’s 101, no. 11 (August 1974): 94–95, 108ff.
“On Turning Fifty.” Vogue 173 (December 1983): 230, 235.
“Postwar Paris: Chronicles of Literary Life.” Paris Review 150 (1998): 317–19.
“A Propitiation of Witches,” Redbook 134, no. 4 (February 1970): 60–170, 172ff.
“Sea Gulls are Happier Here.” Cosmopolitan 162, no. 1 (January 1967): 108–111.
“Summer, Clothes & Love,” SFE Image (June 10, 1990): 28–31.
“The Three Bears and Little Red Riding Hood in the Coffin House,” Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore Their Favorite Fairy Tales, ed. Kate Bernheimer. New York: Anchor Books/Random House, 2002, 5–6.
“Up the Coast.” Gentleman’s Quarterly 62, no. 5 (May 1992): 113–16.
“What to say to friends who have just published something—anything.” Christian Science Monitor, September 18, 1973.
“A Week in Venice,” McCall’s 102, no. 2 (November 1974): 112, 182, 184, 188.
“Why I Write.” First Person Singular: Writers on Their Craft, compiled by Joyce Carol Oates. (Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review Press, 1983), 273–76.
“The Wild Coasts of Portugal,” Geo 6, no. 11 (August 1984): 56–65ff.
“The Wrong Virginia.” Agni Review 43 (1996): 193–205.
“Young Couple with Class.” Redbook 129, no. 5 (September 1967): 72–121ff.
UNPUBLISHED WORKS CITED IN THIS BIOGRAPHY
The following typescripts are among the Alice Adams Papers at the HRC:
“America’s Room, and Mine” (essay, c. 1991).
“A Bachelor’s Fate” (short story, c. 1965).
“A California Trip” (short story, c. 1970).
“Coin of the Realm” (short story, c. 1958).
“Commencement Address for English Department,” University of California Berkeley (May 22, 1987).
“The Cruellest Month” (short story, 1946).
“Curtains” (short story, 1946).
“The Edge of the Water” (short story, c. 1962).
“The Fog in the Streets” (short story, c. 1955).
“Former Friends” (short story, 1983).
“The Furniture: A True Story” (short story, c. 1976).
“The Green Creek” (short story, c. 1955).
“The Hills” (short story, c. 1947).
“The Impersonators” (novel, c. 1951).
“Ladies in Waiting” (short story, c. 1960).
“A Lesson” (essay, 1996).
“Letters to Cambridge” (short story, c. 1960).
“Night Fears” (short story, c. 1962).
“Out Where the Birds Are” (story for children, c. 1995).
“A Room Alone” (short story, 1946).
“School Spirit” (short story, c. 1960).
“Sending Love” (incomplete short story, 1999).
“Street Woman” (essay, c. 1989).
“The Wake” (short story, c. 1955).
“Why I Left Home: Partial Truths” (essay c. 1998, discovered in an unopened envelope by JCA in 2013).
“Wonderful” (short story, 1946).
SELECTED INTERVIEWS WITH ALICE ADAMS
Kay Bonetti, American Audio Prose Library, 1987.
Neil Feineman, “An Interview with Alice Adams,” StoryQuarterly 11 (1980).
Marilyn Scharine, “Our Arts” Wasatch Radio, Salt Lake City, March 1987 (HRC).
Michael Silverblatt, “Bookworm” KCRW (Los Angeles), 1989 (HRC).
Don Swaim, “Interview,” September 17, 1984. Audio recording, Archives and Special Collections, Ohio University, Donald L. Swaim Collection.
Notes
The Alice Adams Papers are held by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas in Austin. Notebooks and unpublished materials and interviews not further identified here are held in that collection; the records of Alfred A. Knopf Inc. are also held at the Ransom Center. The Papers of Agatha Boyd Adams and those of Henry Maxwell Steele reside at the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
In an effort to keep these endnotes from being endless, I have omitted notes for quotations from published works by Alice Adams that are cited within the text. Statements attributed within the text are from interviews I conducted in person or by letter, email, or telephone. At the head of each chapter’s notes I have listed people who provided information for that chapter. The notes below document sources not identified in the text. I have sometimes silently corrected spelling errors in Alice Adams’s notebooks or letters and silently omitted inessential words from quotations. Dates given in brackets are estimates based on contextual information.
Abbreviations used in the notes:
AA
Alice Adams
ABA
Agatha Boyd Adams
AP
Almost Perfect
ATW
After the War
AYG
After You’ve Gone
BG
Beautiful Girl
CD
Caroline’s Daughters
CL
Careless Love or The Fall of Daisy Duke
CS
Carol Sklenicka
DJ
Diane Johnson
DSA
Dorothy Stearns Adams
> FJL
Frances Jaffer (Pain) Linenthal
FS
Families and Survivors
HMS
Henry Maxwell Steele
HRC
University of Texas, Harry Ransom Center
JCA
Judith Clark Adams
LB
Listening to Billie
LJ
Lucie Jessner
LLC
The Last Lonely City
MEX
Mexico: Some Travels and Some Travelers There
ML
Mark Linenthal Junior
MM
Medicine Men
N
Notebooks of Alice Adams, Harry Ransom Center
NBA
Nicholson Barney Adams
NM
Norman Mailer
NYPL
New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division
PA
Philip Anasovich
PAL
Peter Adams Linenthal
PUL
Princeton University Library
RKM
Robert Kendall McNie
RMWC
Randolph-Macon Woman’s College
RP
Richard Poirier
RR
Rich Rewards
RT
Return Trips
SC
Second Chances
SE
A Southern Exposure
SU
Green Library, Stanford University
SW
Superior Women
TS
typescript
TSYA
To See You Again
UNC
University of North Carolina
VW
Victoria Wilson
WMA
William Miller Abrahams
PROLOGUE
1 AA to Kenneth and Valerie Lynn, November 5, 1949.
2 “It’s a very good year for Alice,” San Francisco Examiner, January 31, 1975, 22.
3 AA, “Summer, Clothes & Love.”
4 AA, “At First Sight: Love and Liking, a Memoir.”
5 AA, “Summer, Clothes & Love.”
6 AA, “At First Sight: Love and Liking, a Memoir.”
7 AA, “Home Is Where,” BG.
8 Ann Kolson, “She Writes of the Life Within,” Philadelphia Inquirer, October 15, 1984.
9 AA, “Roses, Rhododendron” and “Alternatives,” BG.
CHAPTER 1: SAVED BY HER DOLLS
1 AA, “Madeline and Me.”
2 Ibid.
3 VW, memorial for AA, June 27, 1999. Audio recording, HRC.
4 AA, “Why I Write.”
5 AA, “On Turning Fifty.”
6 N, November 9, 1959.
7 Birth certificate from Mary Washington Hospital, PAL collection; ob/gyn ward logbook, Duke University Medical Center Archives.
8 Virginia Adams Dare to PAL, September 1, 1985.
9 FS.
10 Laura Croghan Kamonie, Neabsco and Occoquan: The Tayloe Family Iron Plantations, 1730–1830 (Prince William, VA: Prince William Historical Commission, 2003); Laura Croghan Kamonie, Irons in the Fire: The Business History of the Tayloe Family and Virginia’s Gentry, 1700–1860 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007).
11 George McCue, Octagon: Being an Account of a Famous Washington Residence: Its Great Years, Decline and Restoration (Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects Foundation, 1976).
12 Winslow M. Watson, In Memoriam: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe (Washington, DC: Sherman, 1872), 78–79.
13 Anthony Trollope, North America (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1863), 2:50–51.
14 Anne Montgomery, “Buena Vista—Roanoke Plantation,” Journal of the Roanoke Historical Society 1, no. 2 (Winter 1964–65): 23–24.
15 Richard S. Dunn, “The Demographic Structure of American Slavery: Jamaica versus Virginia,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151, no. 1 (March 2007): 43–60; Tayloe family papers are held by the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond.
16 Agatha Boyd Adams, “Jobs for the Helen Hokinson Crowd,” RMWC Alumnae Bulletin 42, no. 4 (June 1949): 8; reprinted in “Wanted: Jobs for the Helen Hokinson Crowd,” AAUW Journal 43, no. 4 (Summer 1950): 213–18.
17 Agatha’s grandmother, Elizabeth Henrietta Tayloe, died in 1864; two years later Munford married his first wife’s cousin, Emma Tayloe, who was the daughter of William Henry Tayloe of Mount Airy.
18 Pearl S. Buck, My Several Worlds (New York: The John Day Co., 1954), 90–93.
19 “flouncy frocks”: Hilary Spurling, Pearl Buck in China: Journey to “The Good Earth” (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71–77; “made the acquaintance”: ABA, “For the Latin Majors,” RMWC Alumnae Bulletin, 43, no. 3 (April 1950): 13.
20 AA, “Verlie I Say Unto You,” BG.
21 ABA, “For the Latin Majors.”
22 1915 yearbook, RMWC; childhood portrait, PAL collection. The 1915 photograph, which AA kept on her desk, was taken by James Abbe, who became a renowned photographer of famous personalities including Shirley Temple, Rudolph Valentino—and Joseph Stalin. Jessica Abbe noticed her grandfather’s name on the picture while she was cat-sitting for AA in the late seventies.
CHAPTER 2: AGATHA AND NIC
Interviews: PAL.
1 Virginia Adams Dare (Nic’s sister) to PAL, October 12, 1987.
2 Virginia Adams Dare to AA, August 23, 1988.
3 Spencer Tucker, Paul G. Pierpaoli, and Walter E. White, The Civil War Naval Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 1:156–57.
4 Virginia Adams Dare to PAL, April 23, 1986.
5 AA, “The Green Creek,” chapter 1, TS, HRC.
6 The following limerick appeared in the Torch yearbook at Collegiate School for Girls in 1917: “There was a young Roman named Boyd / So teaching Latin she could not avoid / But she gave up her job / When she said with a sob, / “For Adams’ Express Company I’ve just been employed.”
7 Virginia Adams Dare to AA, August 23, 1988.
8 US Census, 1920.
9 NBA, The Heritage of Spain: An Introduction to Spanish Civilization (1943; rev. ed., New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1959), ix.
10 Virginia marriage license, June 11, 1920.
11 Columbia University Registrar’s Office, email to CS, September 7, 2011. Nic’s dissertation was published as The Romantic Drama of Garcia Gutiérrez (New York: Instituto de las Españas, 1922).
12 Virginia Adams Dare to PAL, Christmas 1988.
13 AA, “Wonderful,” unpublished TS, HRC.
14 Thomas Boyd, email to PAL, January 15, 2015; John Esten Keller and Karl-Ludwig Selig, eds., Hispanic Studies in Honor of Nicholson B. Adams (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1966), 9.
15 ABA, Paul Green of Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill: UNC Library, 1951), 10.
16 AA interview with Kay Bonetti, American Audio Prose Library.
17 ABA, “The Pastelero de Madrigal in Nineteenth-Century Spanish Literature,” MA thesis, Department of Romance Languages, UNC, 1925. “The madcap expedition to Africa of the young Portuguese king has a romantic charm which allures the fancy even in the dry pages of history; small wonder that poets, dramatists, and balladmakers, have returned to it again and again,” writes Agatha Adams. Perhaps the same species of romantic charm drew Agatha to Nic Adams and Alice to men like Vasco Pereira.
18 ABA, “Jobs for the Helen Hokinson Crowd.”
19 AA, “My First and Only House,” RT, and Orange County, North Carolina, records.
CHAPTER 3: THE FAMILY ROMANCE
Interviews: JCA, Sandy McClamroch, Avery Phillips, Diana Steele, Jacqueline H. Wolf.
1 BG, 6.
2 “Letter to Cambridge,” unpublished MS, HRC.
3 Tar Heel, January 26, 1925; Tar Heel, February 4, 1925. This paper became the Daily Tarheel in 1929.
4 Tar Heel, November 2, 1926.
5 Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times (New York: Henry Holt,
2001), 223–24.
6 “The Green Creek,” unpublished MS, HRC.
7 Record for SS Iˆle de France, arriving in New York from Le Havre, July 23, 1929.
8 Keller and Selig, Hispanic Studies, 11–13.
9 Archives of Henry Holt and Co., PUL.
10 AA to LJ, January 25, 1979.
11 AA, “Why I Left Home: Partial Truths.”
12 ABA to Mrs. J. W. Boyd (dictated by Alice Adams), November 10, 1930.
13 AA, “Child’s Play,” AYG.
14 AA, “Why I Left Home: Partial Truths.”
15 AA, “The Three Bears and Little Red Riding Hood in the Coffin House.”
16 NBA to Tom Wilson, August 19, 1931.
17 Virginia Adams Dare to AA, August 28, 1988. Dare wrote, “Ed and I loved you but were too involved with Gee as an infant to give you the T.L.C. you really needed.”
18 Ann Dally, “Status Lymphaticus: Sudden Death in Children from ‘Visitation of God’ to Cot Death,” Medical History 41 (1997): 70–85; H. B. Dodwell, MD, “Status Lymphaticus: The Growth of a Myth,” Clinical Pathology in General Practice (January 16, 1954), 149–51.
19 The record for Joel Adams’s birth does not mention anesthesia, but the records show that many other cesarean births at Duke used the layered anesthesia protocol, according to Jacqueline H. Wolf, Deliver Me from Pain: Anesthesia and Birth in America (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2009), 94–95, 102–3.
20 A North Carolina certificate of death and Chapel Hill Cemetery records list the burial of Joel in section 3 of the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery. Neither grave marker nor evidence of a metal casket was found near Agatha and Nic’s stones in 2010.
21 The ob-gyn logbook for 1931 at Duke University Medical Center Archives raises other questions about Agatha’s history, listing her with three previous full-term pregnancies, no previous abortions or miscarriages, and two living children at the time of her admission to Duke Hospital in August 1931. No record of any children besides Alice and Joel has been located.