The February House was an artists' commune from 1940 to 1941 in the neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights, New York City. [1]
George Davis, an editor for Harper's Bazaar, rented a brownstone at 7 Middagh St. from late 1940 to 1941. Davis invited friends to move in, looking to foster a creative environment for artists. The main residents of February House were W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Benjamin Britten, Paul Bowles, and Gypsy Rose Lee. [2] The house itself was a mock-Tudor brownstone in disrepair, with faulty plumbing and a lack of locks. [2] [1] Guests of the February House included Salvador and Gala Dalí, Anaïs Nin, Klaus Mann, Jane Bowles, Richard Wright, and Pavel Pchelitchew. [2] [1] It was Nin who named the it February House, for the number of residents with February birthdays. [3]
A number of works were created at the February House: McCullers began writing The Ballad of the Sad Cafe , meeting the inspiration for the characters at a bar in the neighborhood. [4] Lee published The G-String Murders . Auden published The Double Man . Jane Bowles began writing Two Serious Ladies . [1]
By the end of 1941, the main residents of February house, save Davis, had moved out. Auden was broke and took a position at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. McCullers moved in with her mother in Georgia. Lee moved to Chicago for better opportunities. [2] Britten returned to England and produced Peter Grimes . [4] In 1945, Davis left the house too. Soon after Davis left, the house was demolished to construct the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. [2]
In 2012, a musical February House by Gabriel Kahane and Seth Bockley premiered at the Public Theater. It ran for two weeks. [2]
In 2005, a biography February House was written by Sherill Tippins. [4]
Wystan Hugh Auden was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of Anxiety; and on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".
Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer, stripper, and vedette famous for her striptease act. Also an actress, author, and playwright, her 1957 memoir was adapted into the 1959 stage musical Gypsy.
The G-String Murders is a 1941 detective novel written by American burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. There have been claims made that the novel was written by mystery writer Craig Rice, but others have suggested that there is sufficient documented evidence in the form of manuscripts and correspondence to prove Lee wrote at least a large portion, if not the whole, of the novel under the tutelage of editor/friend George Davis with some essential guidance from her good friend Rice. The novel has been published under the titles Lady of Burlesque and The Strip-Tease Murders. Set in a burlesque theater, Lee casts herself as the detective who solves a set of homicides in which strippers in her troupe are found strangled with their own G-strings.
Jane Bowles was an American writer and playwright.
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Carson McCullers was an American novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts in a small town of the Southern United States. Her other novels have similar themes and most are set in the Deep South.
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Brooklyn Heights is a residential neighborhood within the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Old Fulton Street near the Brooklyn Bridge on the north, Cadman Plaza West on the east, Atlantic Avenue on the south, and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway or the East River on the west. Adjacent neighborhoods are Dumbo to the north, Downtown Brooklyn to the east, and Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill to the south.
Boerum Hill is a small neighborhood in the northwestern portion of the New York City borough of Brooklyn, bounded by Schermerhorn Street to the north and Fourth Avenue to the east. The western border is variously given as either Smith or Court Streets, and Warren or Wyckoff Streets as the southern edge.
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George Davis was an American fiction editor and a novelist.
Elizabeth Wolff Mayer was a German-born American translator and editor, closely associated with W. H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, and other writers and musicians. After emigrating to the United States in the 1940s she used her homes in Long Island and New York City as salons for visiting artists.
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