This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations .(April 2009) |
This article contains promotional content .(October 2020) |
Author | Nancy Horan |
---|---|
Cover artist | Barbara M. Bachman |
Language | English |
Genre | Biographical novel |
Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | August 7, 2007 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardback and paperback) |
Pages | 362 pp (first edition, paperback) |
ISBN | 978-0-345-49500-6 (first edition, hardcover) |
OCLC | 187394634 |
813/.6 22 | |
LC Class | PS3608.O725 L68 2008 |
Loving Frank is a 2007 American novel by Nancy Horan. It tells the story of Mamah Borthwick's illicit love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright and the public shame they experienced in early twentieth century America. It is a fictionalised account told from Borthwick's perspective, based on research conducted by Horan, and it is her debut novel. It depicts Borthwick’s life as it became intertwined with Wright's between the years of 1907 through 1914. By following the artistic aspirations and travels of the two main protagonists, the novel portrays the social mores of the times in the United States and Europe.
The book opens with a note by Borthwick, reminiscing on her life and expressing her longing to give her perspective on what happened. The story begins with an account of Borthwick's attendance at a public talk in Oak Park given by Frank Lloyd Wright, a famous architect of the Chicago School. The author reveals that some years earlier, Wright had designed Borthwick's house at the insistence of her husband Edwin Cheney. Wright and Borthwick begin a tumultuous and intermittent affair while they are working together on the architectural plans for the house.
The novel is an introspective portrayal of Borthwick's emotional turmoil as an intellectual, wife, mother, friend, and member of society. It also touches on Wright's personality and human traits in addition to his artistic talent and eccentricities. Throughout the novel, Borthwick explains the artistic or philosophical underpinnings of Wright's extravagant views. The novel goes deep into their family situations and internal conflicts, and allows the reader to see Wright through the lens of Borthwick’s deep admiration. The Swedish feminist Ellen Key unnerves Borthwick when she declares that Borthwick may have followed Wright in order to bask in his brilliance rather than accomplishing anything she can claim as her own.
Several important buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright play a role in Loving Frank.
Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and mentoring hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture".
Spring Green is a village in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,566 at the 2020 census. The village is located within the Town of Spring Green.
The year 1914 in architecture involved some significant events.
John Lloyd Wright was an American architect and toy inventor. Born in Oak Park, Illinois, Wright was the second-oldest son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright. John Lloyd Wright became estranged from his father in 1909 and subsequently left his home to join his brother on the West Coast. After unsuccessfully working a series of jobs, he decided to take up the profession of his father in 1912. Shortly afterward, he was able to reconnect with his father, who took John under his wing. Differences in opinion regarding the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo caused the pair to again become disunited.
Edwin Henry Cheney was an American electrical engineer from Oak Park, Illinois, United States.
Taliesin, sometimes known as Taliesin East, Taliesin Spring Green, or Taliesin North after 1937, is a historic property located 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south of the village of Spring Green, Wisconsin, United States. It was the estate of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and an extended exemplar of the Prairie School of architecture. The expansive house-studio set on the brow of a ridge was begun in 1911; the 600-acre (240 ha) property was developed on land that previously belonged to Wright's maternal family. With a selection of Wright's other work, Taliesin became a listed World Heritage Site in 2019 under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright".
The Wasmuth Portfolio (1910) is a two-volume folio of 100 lithographs of the work of the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959).
Martha Bouton "Mamah" Borthwick was an American translator who had a romantic relationship with architect Frank Lloyd Wright, which ended when she was murdered. She and Wright were instrumental in bringing the ideas and writings of Swedish feminist Ellen Key to American audiences. Wright built his famous settlement called Taliesin in Wisconsin for her, in part, to shield her from aggressive reporters and the negative public sentiment surrounding their non-married status. Both had left their spouses and children in 1909 in order to live together and were the subject of relentless public censure. In 1914, a disturbed member of the staff at Taliesin suddenly went on a murder-suicide spree at the estate killing Borthwick, two of her children and others. Wright was away at the time.
Shining Brow is an English language opera by the American composer Daron Hagen, first performed by the Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin, April 21, 1993. The libretto is by Paul Muldoon, and is based on a treatment co-written with the composer. The story concerns events in the life of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Hagen invited Muldoon to write the libretto while the two were both in residency at the MacDowell Colony, in Peterborough, New Hampshire during the summer of 1989.
Maginel Wright Enright Barney was an American children's book illustrator and graphic artist. She was the younger sister of Frank Lloyd Wright, architect, and the mother of Elizabeth Enright, children's book writer and illustrator.
The Oscar B. Balch House is a home located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. The Prairie style Balch House was designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1911. The home was the first house Wright designed after returning from a trip to Europe with a client's wife. The subsequent social exile cost the architect friends, clients, and his family. The house is one of the first Wright houses to employ a flat roof which gives the home a horizontal linearity. Historian Thomas O'Gorman noted that the home may provide a glimpse into the subconscious mind of Wright. The Balch house is listed as a contributing property to a U.S. federally Registered Historic District.
Edwin H. Cheney House (1903) located in Oak Park, Illinois, United States, was Frank Lloyd Wright's design of this residence for electrical engineer Edwin Cheney. The house is part of the Frank Lloyd Wright–Prairie School of Architecture Historic District. A brick house with the living and sleeping rooms all on one floor under a single hipped roof, the Cheney House has a less monumental and more intimate quality than the design for the Arthur Heurtley House. The intimacy of the Cheney house is due to the building not being a full story off the ground and being sequestered from the main street by a walled terrace. In addition, its windows are nestled between the wide eaves of the roof and the substantial stone sill that girdles the house.
The Women is a 2009 novel by T. C. Boyle. It is a fictional account of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright's life, told through his relationships with four women: the young Montenegrin dancer Olgivanna; Miriam, the "morphine-addicted and obsessive Southern belle"; Mamah, whose life ended in a massacre at Taliesin, the home Wright built for his lovers and wives; and his first wife, Kitty, the mother of six of his children."
Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1953 and completed in 1954, the John and Syd Dobkins House is one of three Wright-designed Usonian houses in Canton, Ohio, United States. Located farther east than the Nathan Rubin Residence and the Ellis A. Feiman House, it is set back from the road. It's a modest sized home with two bedrooms, and one and a half baths. Its distinctive geometric design module is based upon an equilateral triangle. The mortar in the deep red bricks was deeply raked to emphasize the horizontal.
The Frederick C. Bogk House is a single-family residential project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Bogk was an alderman and secretary-treasurer of the Ricketson Paint Works. This house embodies Wright's prairie style elements into a solid-looking structure that appears impregnable.
Nancy Horan is an American author of historical fiction. Her works include Loving Frank, a novel about Mamah Borthwick and her relationship with American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and Under the Wide and Starry Sky, a novel about the relationship between Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife. Horan was awarded the 2009 James Fenimore Cooper Prize for Best Historical Fiction by the Society of American Historians for Loving Frank.
Tan-y-Deri, is also known as the Andrew T. Porter Home and the Jane and Andrew Porter Home. Jane Porter (1869–1953) was the sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The home was commissioned from Wright in 1907, with Jane and Andrew Porter (1858–1948) moving in with their children James (1901–1912) and Anna (1905–1934) by late January 1908. The home stands in a valley in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. This valley was originally settled by the Lloyd Joneses, who were the family of Wright and his sister's mother. The Lloyd Joneses were originally from Wales and, as a result of this heritage, Wright chose a Welsh name for the Porter home: "tan-y-deri" is Welsh for "under the oaks".
Hillside Home School I, also known as the Hillside Home Building, was a Shingle Style building that architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1887 for his aunts, Ellen and Jane Lloyd Jones for their Hillside Home School in the town of Wyoming, Wisconsin. The building functioned as a dormitory and library. Wright had the building demolished in 1950.
The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright is a UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting of a selection of eight buildings across the United States that were designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. These sites demonstrate his philosophy of organic architecture, designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment. Wright's work had an international influence on the development of architecture in the 20th century.
A. Jane Duncombe was born in Whitby, Ontario, Canada. She was a residential designer based in the San Francisco Bay Area some of whose architectural designs can also be found in Illinois and the rest in California. Duncombe studied at the Art Institute of Chicago School of Industrial Design and developed interest in design and architecture through her undergraduate studies. Duncombe was also one of the few female architects who became an apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.