FLANNER, JANET

born March 13, 1892, Indianapolis, Ind., U.S. died Nov. 7, 1978, New York, N.Y. pseudonym Gent American writer who was the Paris correspondent for The New Yorker magazine for nearly half a century. Flanner was the child of Quakers. She attended the University of Chicago in 191214 and then returned to her native Indianapolis, Indiana, and took a job with the Indianapolis Star, becoming the paper's first movie critic in 1916. After a brief marriage and a sojourn in New York City, she traveled through Europe, eventually settling in Paris in 1922. She lived there until 1975 (except for the war years 193944). A friend of Harold Ross, she was hired by him in 1925 to write a periodic "Letter from Paris" for his new magazine, The New Yorker. Signed Gent, the articles contained observations on politics, art, theatre, French culture, and various personalities. The letters were characterized from the first by remarkable sensibility, wit, and clarity. Flanner's reportage was sophisticated, insightful, and cosmopolitan and proved a valuable asset to The New Yorker. In the 1930s Flanner occasionally contributed a "Letter from London." She also wrote several penetrating contributions to The New Yorker's "Profile" series, notably those on Adolf Hitler, Thomas Mann, Edith Wharton, Jean Cocteau, Andr Gide, Picasso, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colette, Igor Stravinsky, Josephine Baker, Maurice Ravel, Edith Piaf, and Elsa Maxwell. Those and other pieces constitute An American in Paris: Profile of an Interlude Between Two Wars (1940). Flanner lived in New York City during the subsequent war years, still writing for The New Yorker. She went back to Paris in 1944 and continued her "Letters" until finally returning to Manhattan in 1975. Most of her essays were collected in Men and Monuments (1957), Paris Journal, 19441965 (1965), Paris Journal, 19651971 (1971), Paris Was Yesterday, 19251939 (1972), London Was Yesterday, 19341939 (1975), and Janet Flanner's World: Uncollected Writings 19321975 (1979). In addition to her collections of essays, Flanner wrote a novel, The Cubical City (1926; reprinted 1974), and translated Colette's Chri (1920) and Georgette Leblanc's Ma vie avec Maeterlinck (U.S. title Souvenirs: My Life with Maeterlinck, 1932). A collection of her letters to Natalia Murray, entitled Darlinghissima, was published in 1985. Additional reading Brenda Wineapple, Gent: A Biography of Janet Flanner (1989).