Newman, Frances

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NEWMAN, Frances

Born 13 December 1883, Atlanta, Georgia; died 22 October 1928, New York, New York

Daughter of William T. and Frances Alexander Newman

Except for travel abroad and brief stays in the East, Frances Newman lived in her native Atlanta, Georgia. Her formal schooling included one year in the Carnegie Library School. Newman was a professional librarian at Florida State College for Women, the Atlanta Carnegie Library, and the Georgia School of Technology Library. She began her writing career as a reviewer for the Atlanta newspapers.

Newman's one published short story, "Rachel and Her Children" (American Mercury, 1924), won the O. Henry Memorial award. "Atlanta Biltmore," her only other story, remains unpublished.

The Short Story's Mutations: From Petronius to Paul Morand (1924) was described in a publicity flyer as "sixteen illustrative stories…woven into ten chapters like episodes in a well-told biography." Beginning with Petronius and ending with Morand, Newman selected stories that were mutations (not evolutions), believing the presence of a genius could produce a new species that would have lasting effect on what came after it. Thus her book is an anthology illustrating Newman's theory of the short story. Her 60 pages of commentary remain useful and impressive, reflecting her sensitivity to fiction and her irritation toward those who "would like to confine brief fictions in an inflexible form."

Newman's extensive criticism remains uncollected. By 1915 she was writing brilliant reviews for the Atlanta Constitution and Journal. Book reviews also appeared in the Bookman and the New York Times. Twelve of Newman's best critical articles and three episodes from what eventually became the novel The Hard-Boiled Virgin (1926, reprinted 1980) were published in the Reviewer, a Richmond journal.

Newman's caustic wit and candor did little to endear her to those she criticized. Repeatedly, she said her own country did not find convictions very important; it was not a century of beliefs and disbeliefs, but of tastes and distastes. Newman was convinced writers of novels must brood over ideas before putting them into words, and "that American writing will probably not be very much better until American critics are better."

The Hard-Boiled Virgin was an instant success, the title alone ensuring its succés de scandale. Newman traced much of her own life in Katharine Faraday, who was also the youngest and least attractive in a handsome family. Trained in Southern mores, Katharine met proper young men but lost them when their courtship (passion) violated her expectations (love). Unable to achieve a proper marriage, she turned writer, traveler, and littérateur. The daring exploits of a properly bred Southern girl made the book appealing to the public. Structured in short chapters (each a paragraph), the novel contains no dialogue. The long, complex sentences reveal Newman's serious preoccupation with style. Her extraordinary gifts of wit, comic irony, and psychological insight delineate the inner self of Katharine Faraday.

Newman's second novel, Dead Lovers Are Faithful Lovers (1928, 1977), has little dialogue. Although slightly flawed by an overabundance of "yellow crêpe de chine negliges," "blue-plumed yellow velvet hats," and operatic allusions, the novel nevertheless superbly presents its ménage à trois : Charlton Cunningham, a young lawyer who rose to railroad president; his wife, Evelyn Page, whose mother "told her that a wife's love always grows and a husband's always lessens"; and Isabel Ramsey, the spinster librarian whom Cunningham began to court after 12 married years. Newman included the daring subjects of sexual sensations, miscegenation, adultery, and divorce. Social nuances were rendered faithfully, but equally significant was the presence of the "new woman" apparent in Isabel's thoughts.

Newman was an interesting woman, slightly out of place in Atlanta in the 1920s, and a distinguished stylist. With the shift in taste that came with the Depression years, her style fell from fashion. Generally, her published work has been little read since the 1920s, though both her novels were reprinted in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her very first novel, The Goldfish Bowl, remains unpublished, and readers are forever cheated of the stories and books left unwritten save for their tantalizing titles: Eminent Virgins, So-Called, History of Sophistication, "Mr. Pringle's Deceased Wife's Sisters," and There's a Certain Elegance about Celibacy. Her translation of Six Moral tales from Jules Laforgue, however, was published posthumously in 1928.

Other Works:

Frances Newman's Letters (edited by H. Baugh, 1929).

Bibliography:

Baugh, H., ed, Frances Newman's Letters (1929). Cabell, J., Some of Us: An Essay in Epitaphs (1930). Clark, E., Innocence Abroad (1931). Jones, A. G., Tomorrow is Another Day: The Woman Writer in the South, 1859-1936 (1981). Ramsey, W., Jules Laforgue and the Ironic Inheritance (1953). Seidel, K. L., The Southern Belle in the American Novel (1985).