Meryle Secrest
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Meryle Secrest (born June Meryle Doman) is an award-winning American biographer, primarily of American artists and art collectors.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Secrest was born in 1930 in Bath, England and educated there. Her father was a tool and die maker, her mother a factory worker. Her family emigrated to Canada, where she began her career as a journalist. She worked as women's editor for the Hamilton News in Ontario, Canada; shortly thereafter she was named "Most Promising Young Writer" by the Canadian Women's Press Club. In 1964 she began writing for the Washington Post, doing profile interviews of notable personalities from Leonard Bernstein to Anaïs Nin.
In 1975 she left the Post to write books full-time. Since then she has written a number of critically-acclaimed biographies; her subjects have included Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Lord Duveen, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein, Salvador Dali, Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson, Romaine Brooks, and Richard Rodgers. She has also published an autobiography entitled Shoot the Widow.
She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957 and now lives in Washington, D.C. [1].
[edit] Books
- Between Me and Life: A Biography of Romaine Brooks, 1974.
- Being Bernard Berenson, 1979.
- Kenneth Clark: A Biography, 1984.
- Salvador Dali, 1986.
- Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography, 1992.
- Leonard Bernstein: A Life, 1994.
- Stephen Sondheim: A Life, 1998.
- Somewhere for Me: A Biography of Richard Rodgers, 2001.
- Duveen: A Life in Art, 2004.
- Shoot the Widow: Adventurers of a Biographer in Search of Her Subject, 2007
[edit] Awards and recognition
Secrest's Being Bernard Berenson was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 and for the American Book Awards in 1981. In 2006 she received the National Humanities Medal.
[edit] Quotes
- [I write biographies] because I wish I had been a creative person and since I'm not a creative person, I'm infinitely fascinated by the process itself. Because after all this is a God-given. But what I want to know is what does it mean to be a creative person and what is the price to be paid and what happens when the moment of creativity comes? And of course one can't ever really know. But that doesn't stop me from asking.
- The older I get the more sympathy I have for families who discover that some stranger has decided to write about their famous member without, as it were, so much as a by-your-leave. Prurience titillates, the more the better, leading to bigger sales and better royalties for the writer who is, not to put too fine a point on it, making money from others' misfortunes.
