Lydia and Maynard: Letters of Lydia Lopokova and John Maynard Keynes - Hardcover

Russian ballerina Lopokova and gay British economist Keynes seemed, to his Bloomsbury circle, the proverbial odd couple. She, a box-office draw in London during this century's second and third decades, was compared to "the wafting and descending of dandelion down" when dancing with the Ballets Russes company--yet her mischievous merrymaking and apparent lack of intellectualism, in Virginia Woolf's words, "put us all on edge." Keynes, however, found her vivacious, alert and seductive, and gladly fit a passionate romance into the interstices of his influential public life. They married in 1925; the letters collected here by Keynes's niece and nephew span 1922-1925. The appeal of this overly long epistolary affair is almost wholly human interest, not historical; only incidental light is shed on either career. The letters are fond, funny and startlingly undignified, with Lopokova emerging as their star. She signs off as "Your lively vitamin," addresses her gent as "Maynarochka," and indulges in outrageous malapropisms and ticklish misappropriations of English (announcing that, at a performance, "I am going to show my healthy mechanism to the healthy crowd" ). Photos not seen by PW .
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Economist Keynes surprised his Bloomsbury friends, who knew him as intellectual and homosexual, when he took up with and eventually married a Russian ballerina. Their courtship correspondence is here collected, edited, and (mercifully) abridged by Keynes's niece and nephew. The letters are for the most part brief notes meant to bridge brief separations. They are warm, playful, include many Bloomsbury names, and are often extremely arch and/or childlike. Few will read the collection straight through for pleasure, but those seriously interested in the life of Keynes or the Bloomsbury group may find it of occasional value or interest. For large research collections; unessential for others.
- Nancy C. Cridland, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.