Author Description

"Never before has Isadora Duncan's life been so engagingly explored. Biographer Peter Kurth recounts this sensational life filled with lavish love affairs, artistic zeal, marvelous performances, and personal tragedies. Kurth allows the free spirit and idiosyncratic personality of this passionate artist to shine through, revealing her dramatic story set against the sweeping backdrop of Europe and the United States in the early twentieth century. Kurth tells of Isadora's longtime love affairs; with English designer Gordon Craig, father of her daughter, Deirdre; with sewing-machine heir Paris Singer, father of her son, Patrick; and with Russian poet Sergei Esenin. Also on this tumultuous stage are her many friends and family, including Auguste Rodin, Jean Cocteau, Edward Steichen, Preston Sturges, Mary Desti, Mercedes de Acosta, the six "Isadorables," and the colorful Duncan clan.". "Drawing from extensive research of major archival sources in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Moscow, and St. Petersburg, including several private archives and unpublished manuscripts, Peter Kurth has created a compelling portrait of an intelligent, complicated, conflicted woman. As the New York Times said of her in 1928: "It is quite certain that no other American woman has so impressed the world outside of America - made such a mighty stir, commanded such a following at home and abroad... left behind her such a legend of personality and such a trail of effects.""--BOOK JACKET.