Francine du Plessix Gray

Francine du Plessix Gray (September 25, 1930 – January 13, 2019), was a French-American Pulitzer Prize–nominated writer and literary critic.

Francine du Plessix Gray
Born
Francine du Plessix

(1930-09-25)September 25, 1930
Warsaw, Poland
DiedJanuary 13, 2019(2019-01-13) (aged 88)
Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States
CitizenshipFrance, United States
EducationBryn Mawr College 1948–50
Black Mountain College summers 1951–52
Barnard College B.A. 1952
OccupationAuthor
Political partyDemocratic
Spouse(s)Cleve Gray
ChildrenThaddeus Ives Gray
Luke Alexander Gray
Parent(s)Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix
Tatiana Yakovleva du Plessix Liberman
Alexander Liberman (stepfather)

Biography

Early life, family background, and education

She was born on September 25, 1930, in Warsaw, Poland, where her father, Vicomte Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix, was a French diplomat – the commercial attaché. She spent her early years in Paris, where a milieu of mixed cultures and a multilingual family (French father and Russian mother) influenced her. Her father, then a sub-lieutenant in the Free French Air Force died in 1940, shot down near Gibraltar.[1][2]

Her mother, Tatiana Iacovleff du Plessix, (1906–1991) had come to France as a refugee from Bolshevik Russia, and ended an engagement to Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1928, before marrying du Plessix. During her widowhood, she once again became a refugee, escaping occupied France via Lisbon to New York in 1940 or 1941 with Francine and Alexander Liberman (1912–1999). In 1942, she married Liberman, another White Russian émigré, whom she had known in Paris as a child. (During his love affair with Liberman's mother, her uncle, Alexandre Yacovleff, had recruited Tatiana to keep the boy occupied.) He was a noted artist and later a longtime editorial director of Vogue magazine and then of Condé Nast Publications. The Libermans were socially prominent in media, art and fashion circles.[3][4][5]

For the first six months in the United States, young Francine lived with her mother's father (whom she had never met) in Rochester, New York, while her mother settled in. She grew up in New York City and was naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1952. She was a scholarship student at Spence School, where she fainted in the library from malnutrition. Her mother learned that she had not been eating the meals the housekeeper prepared for her. She attended Bryn Mawr College for two years, and earned a B.A. in philosophy at Barnard College in 1952.[6][1][3]

Personal life

On 23 April 1957, she married the painter Cleve Gray and until his death they lived together in Connecticut. They had two sons, Luke and Thaddeus Ives Gray.[6][7][8] Francine du Plessix Gray died on January 13, 2019 in Manhattan.[9][10]

Career

From 1952 to 1954, Gray worked as a night-desk reporter for United Press International in New York City. From 1954 to 1955, she was an editorial assistant for Réalités, a French magazine, Paris. She became a freelance writer in 1955. From 1964 to 1966, she was a book editor for Art in America in New York City. In 1968, she became a staff writer for The New Yorker with Robert Gottlieb as her editor. In 1975, she was a distinguished visiting professor at City College of New York. In 1981, she was a visiting lecturer at Saybrook College, Yale University. Since 1983, she was an adjunct professor for the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University. Since 1986, she was a ferris professor at Princeton University. She became an Annenberg fellow at Brown University in 1997.[6]

Memberships

Awards
  • Putnam Creative Writing Award from Barnard College, 1952
  • National Catholic Book Award from Catholic Press Association, 1971, for Divine Disobedience: Profiles in Catholic Radicalism
  • Front Page Award from Newswomen's Club of New York, 1972, for Hawaii: The Sugar-Coated Fortress[11]
  • LL.D.
City University of New York, 1981
Oberlin College, 1985
University of Santa Clara, 1985
St. Mary's College of California
University of Hartford

Books
  • Divine disobedience: profiles in Catholic radicalism. New York: Knopf, 1970.
  • Hawaii: the sugar-coated fortress. New York: Random House, 1972.
  • Lovers and tyrants. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976.
  • World without end: a novel. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981.
  • October blood. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
  • ADAM & EVE and the CITY. Simon & Schuster, 1987.
  • Soviet women: walking the tightrope. New York: Doubleday, 1990.
  • Rage and fire: a life of Louise Colet, pioneer feminist, literary star, Flaubert's muse. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
  • At home with the Marquis de Sade: a life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
  • Simone Weil. New York: Viking Press, 2001.
  • Them: a memoir of parents. New York: Penguin Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-14-303719-4.
  • Madame de Staël. Atlas & Co. 2008. ISBN 978-1-934633-17-5.[12]

References
  1. Mcalpin, Heller (22 May 2005). "Living lives of glamour in the midst of chaos". Los Angeles Times. p. R-3. Retrieved 31 October 2008.
  2. "Bertrand Jochaud du Plessix". Ordre de la Libération (in French). 7 July 2004. Archived from the original on 2002-11-23. Retrieved 31 October 2008.
  3. Bellafante, Ginia (28 April 2005). "Francine du Plessix Gray: A Back Turned On the High Life". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 November 2008.
  4. Maier, Thomas (1997). Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power, and Glory of America's Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It. Big Earth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-55566-191-5. Retrieved 2008-11-01.
  5. Flint, Peter B. (29 April 1991). "Tatiana du Plessix Liberman Dies; Leading Designer of Hats Was 84". The New York Times. Retrieved 31 October 2008.
  6. Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2008. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2008. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC Document Number: H1000038983. Entry updated: 20 March 2006. Fee. Accessed 2008-10-31.
  7. "Luke Gray—Deciphering the Complexity of the Human Spirit Through Imagery". Litchfield County Times. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  8. "Allison Bottom To Wed in April". The New York Times. 1991-11-24. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  9. William, Grimes (January 14, 2019). "Francine du Plessix Gray, Searching Novelist and Journalist, Is Dead at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved January 16, 2019.
  10. Gopnik, Adam (January 15, 2019). "Becoming Francine du Plessix Gray". The New Yorker. Retrieved January 16, 2018.
  11. "Newswomen Name Winners of Awards". The New York Times. CXXII (41941) (Late City ed.). November 22, 1972. p. 41. Retrieved November 10, 2020.
  12. See, Carolyn (31 October 2008). "French Letters' Open Book". The Washington Post. p. C2. [She] does a marvelous job in "Madame de Staël" filling us in on the French Revolution as though it were easy to understand...I loved this book!
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