Anybody who was anybody in the intellectual and art worlds of the early twentieth century hung out at Mabel’s salon, among them: D.H. Lawrence, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Andrew Dassburg, Georgia O’Keefe, Leon Gaspard, Ansel Adams, and Robinson Jeffers. Beginning in New York’s Greenwich Village after a stint in a Medici villa in Florence, Mabel Dodge worked for her vision of a “New World Plan” to bring the world’s greatest thinkers, writers, artists, musicians, and social reformers together to whet each other’s minds and create a second renaissance. Lois Palken Rudnick, a historian specializing in this era, says this about Mabel, “When she came back to the States, she landed in New York City amidst America’s first great social and political revolution. She became one of the rebels of Greenwich Village and was involved with the Armory Show, the first show of post- impressionist art to come to the States. She supported anarchists and socialists and their projects, like Emma Goldman and Margaret Sanger…She was an artist of life.”
This excerpt is from The Book of Awesome Women by Becca Anderson which is available now through Amazon and Mango Media
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