Lost Writings

Two never-before-published novels by Mina Loy, the celebrated modernist poet, artist, and feminist.

Mina Loy (1882–1966) is an essential figure of the European and American modernist avant-garde. A groundbreaking writer of poetry, novels, essays, plays, and uncategorizable prose, she was also a fashion and lighting designer and an accomplished visual artist. As gallery agent for figures such as Giorgio de Chirico, Alberto Giacometti, and Salvador Dalí, she was a significant conduit for art that traversed the Atlantic. Loy has been best known for the poetry she published in the little magazines of the late teens and early twenties, most notably the long poem Songs to Joannes and the autobiographical verse-epic Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose.

Featuring two never-before-published manuscripts of Loy's autobiographical prose—The Child and the Parent and Islands in the Air—this remarkable book expands Loy's rich oeuvre. Interlinked texts written over twenty years, from the 1930s to the 1950s, these fascinating works narrate the feminist struggle of the creative spirit as it comes into consciousness and encounters indoctrinating social norms. The works are accompanied by an introduction and afterword by Karla Kelsey that frame Loy as a poet, prose writer, businesswoman, and visual artist and discuss the texts, their stylistic innovations, and their unique interconnectedness.