Alyse Gregory
Encyclopedia
Alyse Gregory was an American suffragist and writer.
Her father was a doctor in Nowalk. She showed musical talent at an early age, was sent to Paris
, France
, to receive a musical education when she was fifteen years old, and continued her study of music on her return to the United States
. She was invited by Mrs. Catherine Fiske, a famous concert singer, to return to Paris and live with her and be trained as a professional singer. She remained for a year in Paris with Mrs Fiske.
She was drawn gradually into public movements by her interest in social justice after returning to her home country, and decided to give up her singing ambitions. She became involved in local politics and the women’s suffrage movement, for which she was a fearless public speaker. Gregory decided to start a women's suffrage club in Connecticut ; as she explains in her autobigraphical book The Day Is Gone (page 100), its first meeting brought together herself and five other women. She later (page 104, op. cit.) worked as assistant state organizer for the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, when that State held a referendum on woman suffrage in 1915, and was active for the cause in the State of New York
.
After a visit to England
during the 1914–18 First World War, she settled in Patchin Place
in New York City
, where she formed close friendships with a group of young artists and writers. She worked for two years as a copywriter in an advertising agency, which position she left in order to earn her living as a freelance writer. She began contributing articles to such publications as The Freeman, The New Republic
and The Dial, becoming Managing Editor of this last journal in February, 1924. Six months later, she married the English writer Llewelyn Powys
, and in June of 1925, resigned her position with The Dial to accompany her husband to England, where for five years they lived in a coastguard cottage on White Nothe
, one of the wildest headlands of the Dorset
coast.
Her first novel, She Shall Have Music was published in 1926, followed by King Log and Lady Lea (1929) and Hester Craddock (1931), both of which were written in Dorset.
She and her husband visited Palestine
in 1928, and they spent the winter of 1930 in a house in the Berkshire Hills lent to them by Edna St. Vincent Millay
and Eugen Boissevain. From there, they paid a visit to the West Indies. On their return to England, Llewelyn Powys suffered a relapse from an old illness, and in the winter of 1936, they went to Switzerland
, where she wrote a book of essays, Wheels on Gravel (1938).
After Llewelyn Powys' death from tuberculosis
in Switzerland in December 1939, Alyse went to live in the same remote house as his sisters, Gertrude and Philippa Powys
, on Chaldon Down near East Chaldon, and wrote her autobiographical reminiscences, entitled The Day Is Gone, published in New York by E. P. Dutton
(1948). She was a friend of many eminent people, including Florida Scott-Maxwell
(who had been a pupil of Jung
), Randolph Bourne
, Van Wyck Brooks
, Lewis Mumford
, Amy Lowell
, William Rose Benét
and his brother Stephen Vincent Benét
, Malcolm Elwin, Theodore Dreiser
, Edna St. Vincent Millay
, Marianne Moore
and Sylvia Townsend Warner
. She tended to remain in the shadow of her late husband (whose work and reputation she did much to promote), while continuing to contribute her own articles to a variety of journals up until the late 1950s.
In 1957, Alyse Gregory moved into Velthams Cottage, Morebath
, Devon
, as the tenant of Mrs Rosamund Mary Rose (née Rosamund Mary Trafford), at a rent of "one peppercorn a year (if demanded)". After the sudden death of her landlady on 12 May 1958, Velthams was bought at auction in 1960 by the writer Oliver Stonor
, who had known Alyse previously; they were both present at local celebrations in East Chaldon on 7 or 8 May, 1945, for the end of the Second World War in Europe
, which took the form of a large bonfire near the Five Marys, a local group of prehistoric barrows. In her last years, many friends visited her, in spite of the rural isolation of Morebath, which had a railway station until 1966. Alyse had long been an advocate of voluntary euthanasia
, and planned her departure from this life. She took a lethal overdose in 1967, and was cremated in Taunton, Somerset. Her last visitor was the historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliffe.
Excerpts from her diaries were published in 1973 under the title The Cry of a Gull.
In 1999, Alyse Gregory: A Woman at her Window by Jacqueline Peltier was published (London, Cecil Woolf).
The Sundial Press reissued Gregory's third novel, Hester Craddock, at the end of January 2007 with a new introduction by Barabara Ozieblo.
Her father was a doctor in Nowalk. She showed musical talent at an early age, was sent to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, to receive a musical education when she was fifteen years old, and continued her study of music on her return to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. She was invited by Mrs. Catherine Fiske, a famous concert singer, to return to Paris and live with her and be trained as a professional singer. She remained for a year in Paris with Mrs Fiske.
She was drawn gradually into public movements by her interest in social justice after returning to her home country, and decided to give up her singing ambitions. She became involved in local politics and the women’s suffrage movement, for which she was a fearless public speaker. Gregory decided to start a women's suffrage club in Connecticut ; as she explains in her autobigraphical book The Day Is Gone (page 100), its first meeting brought together herself and five other women. She later (page 104, op. cit.) worked as assistant state organizer for the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association, when that State held a referendum on woman suffrage in 1915, and was active for the cause in the State of New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
.
After a visit to England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the 1914–18 First World War, she settled in Patchin Place
Patchin Place
Patchin Place is a gated cul-de-sac located off of 10th Street between Greenwich Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where she formed close friendships with a group of young artists and writers. She worked for two years as a copywriter in an advertising agency, which position she left in order to earn her living as a freelance writer. She began contributing articles to such publications as The Freeman, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
and The Dial, becoming Managing Editor of this last journal in February, 1924. Six months later, she married the English writer Llewelyn Powys
Llewelyn Powys
Llewelyn Powys was a British writer and younger brother of John Cowper Powys and T. F. Powys.-Life:Powys was born in Dorchester, the son of a clergyman, and was educated at Sherborne School and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. While lecturing in the United States he contracted tuberculosis...
, and in June of 1925, resigned her position with The Dial to accompany her husband to England, where for five years they lived in a coastguard cottage on White Nothe
White Nothe
White Nothe is a chalk headland on the English Channel coast at the eastern end of Ringstead Bay, east of Weymouth in Dorset, England. The area is well-known for its geology and fossils...
, one of the wildest headlands of the Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
coast.
Her first novel, She Shall Have Music was published in 1926, followed by King Log and Lady Lea (1929) and Hester Craddock (1931), both of which were written in Dorset.
She and her husband visited Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
in 1928, and they spent the winter of 1930 in a house in the Berkshire Hills lent to them by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
and Eugen Boissevain. From there, they paid a visit to the West Indies. On their return to England, Llewelyn Powys suffered a relapse from an old illness, and in the winter of 1936, they went to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, where she wrote a book of essays, Wheels on Gravel (1938).
After Llewelyn Powys' death from tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in Switzerland in December 1939, Alyse went to live in the same remote house as his sisters, Gertrude and Philippa Powys
Philippa Powys
Catharine Edith Philippa Powys , a novelist and poet, belonged to one of the most distinguished families in modern literature.-Family:Among her brothers were the novelists John Cowper Powys and Theodore Francis Powys and the essayist Llewelyn Powys as well as Littleton Charles Powys , headmaster...
, on Chaldon Down near East Chaldon, and wrote her autobiographical reminiscences, entitled The Day Is Gone, published in New York by E. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton
E. P. Dutton was an American book publishing company founded as a book retailer in Boston, Massachusetts in 1852 by Edward Payson Dutton. In 1986, the company was acquired by Penguin Group and split into two imprints: Dutton Penguin and Dutton Children's Books.-History:Edward Payson Dutton founded...
(1948). She was a friend of many eminent people, including Florida Scott-Maxwell
Florida Scott-Maxwell
Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell was a playwright, author and psychologist.-Early life:Florida Pier was born in Orange Park, Florida, and educated at home until the age of ten. She grew up in Pittsburgh, then moved to New York at age 15 to become an actress...
(who had been a pupil of Jung
Jung
Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of analytical psychology.Jung may also refer to:* Jung * JUNG, Java Universal Network/Graph Framework-See also:...
), Randolph Bourne
Randolph Bourne
Randolph Silliman Bourne was a progressive writer and "leftist intellectual" born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University...
, Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks
Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.- Biography :Brooks was educated at Harvard University and graduated in 1908...
, Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Lewis Mumford was an American historian, philosopher of technology, and influential literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer...
, Amy Lowell
Amy Lowell
Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926.- Personal life:...
, William Rose Benét
William Rose Benét
William Rose Benét was an American poet, writer, and editor.He was the older brother of Stephen Vincent Benét....
and his brother Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét
Stephen Vincent Benét was an American author, poet, short story writer, and novelist. Benét is best known for his book-length narrative poem of the American Civil War, John Brown's Body , for which he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929, and for two short stories, "The Devil and Daniel Webster" and "By...
, Malcolm Elwin, Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
, Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet, playwright and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, and was known for her activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work...
, Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore
Marianne Moore was an American Modernist poet and writer noted for her irony and wit.- Life :Moore was born in Kirkwood, Missouri, in the manse of the Presbyterian church where her maternal grandfather, John Riddle Warner, served as pastor. She was the daughter of mechanical engineer and inventor...
and Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...
. She tended to remain in the shadow of her late husband (whose work and reputation she did much to promote), while continuing to contribute her own articles to a variety of journals up until the late 1950s.
In 1957, Alyse Gregory moved into Velthams Cottage, Morebath
Morebath
Morebath is an upland village in the county of Devon, mostly given over to sheep-farming, and situated on the southern edge of Exmoor.An account of life in Morebath in the sixteenth century can be read in The Voices of Morebath: Reformation and Rebellion in an English Village by Eamon Duffy...
, Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, as the tenant of Mrs Rosamund Mary Rose (née Rosamund Mary Trafford), at a rent of "one peppercorn a year (if demanded)". After the sudden death of her landlady on 12 May 1958, Velthams was bought at auction in 1960 by the writer Oliver Stonor
Oliver Stonor
Oliver Stonor was an English novelist, reviewer, translator, and man of letters. He was briefly the husband of the Irish writer Norah Hoult....
, who had known Alyse previously; they were both present at local celebrations in East Chaldon on 7 or 8 May, 1945, for the end of the Second World War in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, which took the form of a large bonfire near the Five Marys, a local group of prehistoric barrows. In her last years, many friends visited her, in spite of the rural isolation of Morebath, which had a railway station until 1966. Alyse had long been an advocate of voluntary euthanasia
Voluntary euthanasia
Voluntary euthanasia refers to the practice of ending a life in a painless manner...
, and planned her departure from this life. She took a lethal overdose in 1967, and was cremated in Taunton, Somerset. Her last visitor was the historical novelist Rosemary Sutcliffe.
Excerpts from her diaries were published in 1973 under the title The Cry of a Gull.
In 1999, Alyse Gregory: A Woman at her Window by Jacqueline Peltier was published (London, Cecil Woolf).
The Sundial Press reissued Gregory's third novel, Hester Craddock, at the end of January 2007 with a new introduction by Barabara Ozieblo.