Crosby, Caresse, 1891-1970

Caresse Crosby; born Mary Phelps Jacob; April 20, 1891, New Rochelle, New York, U.S. – January 24, 1970, Rome, Italy; oldest daughter of Mary Phelps and William Hearn Jacob, and had two brothers, Leonard and Walter "Bud" Phelps; nicknamed "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother; Her ancestry included a knight of the Crusades and the Allardyce family in the War of the Roses. Her family was descended from a prominent New England family, Puritans. On her mother's side her seventh great-grandfather, William Phelps, departed from Plymouth, England in 1630 and founded Dorchester, Boston. She was the granddaughter of General Walter Phelps, who commanded troops at the Civil War Battle of Antietam. On her father's side she included among her ancestors Robert Fulton, developer of the steamboat, and the Plymouth Colony's first governor, William Bradford; attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, and then boarded at Rosemary Hall; Polly filed for a patent for her invention on February 12, 1914 and in November that year the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted her a patent for the 'Backless Brassiere'; After she married Richard Peabody, Polly filed a legal certificate with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 19, 1920, declaring that she was a married woman conducting a business using separate funds from her husband's bank account. She founded the Fashion Form Brassière Company and located her manufacturing shop on Washington Street in Boston, where she opened a two-woman sweatshop that manufactured her wireless brassière during 1922. The location also served as a convenient place for romantic trysts with Harry Crosby, who would become her second husband; In 1915, Polly Jacob and Richard ("Dick") Peabody were married by his grandfather, Endicott Peabody; had a son, William Jacob, on February 4, 1916, Poleen Wheatland ("Polly"), was born on August 12, 1917; In June 1921, she formally separated from Dick, and in December he offered to divorce her. In February 1922, Polly and Richard Peabody were legally divorced; married Harry Crosby, 1922; At the end of 1924, Harry persuaded Polly to formally change her first name; Lived in expatriate community in Paris, joining the Lost Generation of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the restrictive atmosphere of 1920s America; Caresse and Harry published her first book, Crosses of Gold, in late 1924; In April, 1927, they founded an English language publishing company, first called Éditions Narcisse, In 1928, Harry and Caresse changed the name of the press to the Black Sun Press; had affairs with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Canada Lee; married Selbert "Bert" Saffold Young, 1937 in Virginia; ghost writer for Henry Miller; Caresse moved to live in Washington, D.C. full-time, where she owned a home at 2008 Q Street NW from 1937 to 1950, and she opened the Caresse Crosby Modern Art Gallery; became politically active again and founded the organizations Women Against War and Citizens of the World; In the 1950s she rented castle named Castello di Rocca Sinibalda; friends with Anaïs Nin; descended from American colonial families—her father from the Van Rensselaer family

Caresse Crosby was born Mary Phelps Jacob on April 30, 1891 in New Rochelle, New York, daughter of a prominent New England family. After a brief marriage to Richard Rogers Peabody, she married Harry Crosby in 1922 and soon after moved to France. In April, 1927, they founded a publishing company soon to become The Black Sun Press. The publications included a Hindu Love Book, The Fall of the House of Usher, and letters by Harry's cousin, Henry James, to Walter Berry. Other contributors to the Black Sun Press included D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, Rene Crevel, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound among others. Caresse wrote a book of poetry, Crosses of Gold, which they also published. In 1928, Harry met Josephine Noyes Rotch with whom he had an ongoing affair. On December 10, 1929, in an apparent suicide pact, Harry and Josephine were found dead in a hotel room. After Harry Crosby's suicide, Caresse kept the Black Sun Press going. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and Dorothy Parker, among others. Ahead of her time, her paperback books did not sell well, and the press closed in 1933. The Black Sun Press, however, continued publishing into the 1950s. In 1936 Caresse and her new husband Selbert Saffold moved to Bowling Green, Virginia where she kept company with Salvador Dali, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin. By 1941, having divorced Saffold, Caresse moved to Washington D.C., where she opened the city's only modern art gallery. She also started Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly, a magazine that sought to continue her work with young and avant-garde writers and artists. She published six editions before she ran out of funds and sponsors. This was her last major publishing effort. She became politically active and founded the organizations Women Against War and Citizens of the World, which embraced the concept of a "world community" which other activists like Buckminster Fuller also supported. In 1953, Caresse published her autobiography, The Passionate Years. She died in relative obscurity from complications from pneumonia in Rome on January 24, 1970, aged 78.