[~baby~doll~]

All We Know: Three Lives by Lisa Cohen

In my eyes a somewhat sad biography of three women lost in history, Esther Murphy, Mercedes de Acosta, and Madge Garland. All lesbian, all talented. They faded into the setting as less than glossy and memorable.

Follows is a review I liked from Amazon.

Each of these three women have receded in popular memory, and it is exactly this loss of fame which has attracted Lisa Cohen. Esther Murphy lived and conversed with many of the transcendent minds of her time in the first half of the 20th century. She started many a monologue with "all we know" and proceeded to share the extensive research and thought on a particular subject. Her passion was Madame de Maintenant whose biography she never finished. Mercedes de Acosta was the perhaps the prototype fan. She was obsessed with Garbo with whom she had a short affair. But her gift was in the appreciation and promotion of talent as she found it. Finally Madge Garland, a pivotal founder of British Vogue. She was linked with the Bloomsbury group and enmeshed the magazine with their creation as people of fashion and their contributions to the magazine. Huxley once asked her, "Are you dressed like that because you're on Vogue, or are you on Vogue, or are you on Vogue because you're dressed like that?"

This book is one Publisher's Weekly's top 10 books of 2012. In "All We Know", we see a history of modernism as seen by three women who lived at a time that the contributions of women were often considered to be correctly in the unsung category. All three were gay and had their lives judged in that light often to their detriment. All three were touched by alcohol in an era of the great social experiment. Temperance failed to the point that alcohol became key in the lives of public figures. Lisa Cohen shrived to make their lives visible again. This book then, in part, is a philosophical exercise in the examination of the person who left accomplishment rather than fame.

The writing is rich and draws a detailed view of a world of women in the twenties.

Enjoy!