Why am I passionate about this?

Growing up in a small town and realizing I was gay, I saw nothing but dread ahead of me. In graduate school, I came across a one-sentence description of Margaret Anderson as a “lesbian anarchist.” I knew I was home. My book is the first full-length biography of Anderson and her partner, Jane Heap. They went through a lot of crap–they were tried for publishing Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses–but above all, they were witty rebels, strong women, and proud and out. 


I wrote

Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the "Little Review"

By Holly A. Baggett,

Book cover of Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the "Little Review"

What is my book about?

My book is the first book-length account of the lives of  Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the women who founded…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of My Thirty Years' War: An Autobiography

Holly A. Baggett Why did I love this book?

I love the humor, self-confidence, and acerbic wit of Margaret Anderson–a woman known by few, but those who know her love her.

Writing in her thirties she looks back with a keen eye for the geniuses of modernism–Joyce, Eliot, Pound, etc. She also, with her lover Jane Heap, published early feminist and LGBTQ content. And she is funny. An iconoclast from Day 1.

By Margaret C. Anderson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked My Thirty Years' War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Illustrated with black and white photos.


Book cover of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

Holly A. Baggett Why did I love this book?

Like Anderson, Gertrude Stein had a sense of humor about gay Paree. Who else would write someone else’s autobiography?

I love her tone of detached amusement when describing the artistic titans of the Lost Generation. If you don’t get it, try the recipe for Alice B. Toklas brownies. 

By Gertrude Stein,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.


Ad

Book cover of Follow Me to Africa

Follow Me to Africa By Penny Haw,

Historical fiction inspired by the story of Mary Leakey, who carved her own path to become one of the world's most distinguished paleoanthropologists.

It's 1983 and seventeen-year-old Grace Clark has just lost her mother when she begrudgingly accompanies her estranged father to an archeological dig at Olduvai Gorge on the…

Book cover of Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner

Holly A. Baggett Why did I love this book?

This biography gives you the inside experience of one of the most visible lesbians in Paris during the mid-twentieth century.

Genet was the pseudonym for Janet Flanner, The New Yorker’s correspondent for France. Flanner knew and wrote about everyone. Her column noting Anderson’s death is particularly touching. From Indiana to the City of Lights in one lifetime.

By Brenda Wineapple,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Genet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The daughter of an Indianapolis mortician, Janet Flanner really began to live at the age of thirty, when she fled to Paris with her female lover. That was in 1921, a few years before she signed on as Paris correspondent for the New Yorker, taking the pseudonym Genet. For half a century she described life on the Continent with matchless elegance.


Book cover of All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930

Holly A. Baggett Why did I love this book?

They were poets, actresses, singers, artists, journalists, publishers, baronesses, and benefactresses. They were thinkers, and they were drinkers. Edna St Vincent Millay, Djuna Barnes, Isadora Duncan, and Ma Rainey–knew how to have fun.

I love the way the author deftly describes each woman—women who lived in an era that still defined women as second-class citizens. Each was unique in her own way—bold, brassy, and making no compromise with gender and sexual norms of the day.

This book is an entertaining and informative guide to the music, martinis, and sometimes mayhem of these daring, brazen, and historical heroines! 

By Andrea Barnet,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked All-Night Party as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

They were smart. Sassy. Daring. Exotic. Eclectic. Sexy. And influential. One could call them the first divas--and they ran absolutely wild. They were poets, actresses, singers, artists, journalists, publishers, baronesses, and benefactresses. They were thinkers and they were drinkers. They eschewed the social conventions expected of them--to be wives and mothers--and decided to live on their own terms. In the process, they became the voices of a new, fierce feminine spirit.There's Mina Loy, a modernist poet and much-photographed beauty who traveled in pivotal international art circles; blues divas Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters; Edna St. Vincent Millay, the lyric poet…


Ad

Book cover of Brother. Do. You. Love. Me.

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. By Manni Coe, Reuben Coe (illustrator),

Brother. Do. You. Love. Me. is a true story of brotherly love overcoming all. Reuben, who has Down's syndrome, was trapped in a care home during the pandemic, spiralling deeper into a non-verbal depression. From isolation and in desperation, he sent his older brother Manni a text, "brother. do. you.…

Book cover of Free Love

Holly A. Baggett Why did I love this book?

A murder mystery set in Prohibition Greenwich Village–fun, frothy, and a fictional but true new take on all of these lovely ladies.

I love the recapturing of the Village of the era–the winding streets, brownstones, speakeasies, and gangsters. Who is the dead woman detective Olivia Brown tripped over? 

By Annette Meyers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Free Love as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In a mystery set in New York's Greenwich Village during the Roaring Twenties, newly published poet Olivia Brown, determined to experience everything her bohemian neighborhood has to offer, suddenly finds herself embroiled in a murder and on the trail of a killer bent on revenge


Explore my book 😀

Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the "Little Review"

By Holly A. Baggett,

Book cover of Making No Compromise: Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, and the "Little Review"

What is my book about?

My book is the first book-length account of the lives of  Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the women who founded the avant-garde journal The Little Review in Chicago in 1914.

Born in the nineteenth-century Midwest, Anderson and Heap grew up to be iconoclastic rebels, living openly as lesbians and advocating causes from anarchy to feminism and free love. As their paths crisscrossed Chicago, New York, Paris, and Europe; two World Wars; and a parade of the most celebrated artists of their time, they transformed themselves and their journal into major forces for shifting perspectives on literature and art. They were “out” lesbians in the early 20th century; both had a rollicking sense of humor and saw through the social/sexual absurdities of their time.

Book cover of My Thirty Years' War: An Autobiography
Book cover of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Book cover of Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,601

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 You might also like…

Book cover of The Last Bird of Paradise

The Last Bird of Paradise By Clifford Garstang,

Two women, a century apart, seek to rebuild their lives after leaving their homelands. Arriving in tropical Singapore, they find romance, but also find they haven’t left behind the dangers that caused them to flee.

Haunted by the specter of terrorism after 9/11, Aislinn Givens leaves her New York career…

Book cover of Lightning Strike Blues

Lightning Strike Blues By Gayleen Froese,

One summer night in a small prairie city, 18-year-old Gabriel Reece accidentally outs himself to his redneck brother Colin, flees on his motorcycle, and gets struck by lightning on his way out of town.

He’s strangely fine, walking away from his melted pile of bike without a scratch. There’s no…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in France, Paris, and reenwich Village?

France 953 books
Paris 397 books
Reenwich Village 29 books