Many literary scholars consider Walt Whitman this country’s most influential poet. The works collected in Whitman’s Leaves of Grass pay homage to the freedom and dignity of the individual while celebrating democracy and the brotherhood of man. Peter Doyle was a 21-year-old conductor on a horse-drawn streetcar when he and Whitman, who was 45 [...]

  Greta Garbo was a stunningly beautiful actress was so talented, so glamorous, and so captivating on screen that she became the epitome of the Hollywood movie star. Mercedes de Acosta, who was born into a socially prominent New York family, taught Garbo how to speak, how to dress, and how to live in the [...]

  Audre Lorde was a widely acclaimed author who focused on the issues of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Frances Clayton was a tenured professor of psychology at Brown University, until she left that position to support Lorde’s transformation into a full-time author. Lorde and Clayton were in an outlaw marriage from 1968 until 1988.

Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns revolutionized the art world. They incorporated everyday objects and popular imagery into their works, thereby pioneering what amounted to an entire new category of visual media. Rauschenberg and Johns were in an outlaw marriage from 1954 until 1962, a period that critics consider the most fertile in both artists’ long [...]

Tennessee Williams was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. Frank Merlo earned his living as a truck driver until he became romantically involved with Williams and began the process of weaning the playwright off a toxic dependence on drugs and casual sex. Williams and Merlo were in an outlaw from 1948 until 1963, when Merlo died of [...]

  Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were widely recognized, during the final decades of the twentieth century, as setting the gold standard when it came to adapting iconic novels into high-quality motion pictures. Among their best-known works are A Room with a View and Howards End—both films won multiple Academy Awards. Merchant and Ivory were [...]

  Gertrude Stein was an avant-garde author as well as a literary mentor for such legendary writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Alice B. Toklas took it upon herself to see that Stein’s works got into print, becoming not only her partner’s editor but also her literary agent and publicist. Stein and Toklas [...]

  Elsie de Wolfe is widely recognized as the founder of the field of interior designer. Bessie Marbury was a highly successful theatrical agent, as well as the woman who made a series of suggestions to de Wolfe that led to the interior designer becoming a pioneer in her field. De Wolfe and Marbury were [...]

  Jane Addams was, during the early years of the 20th century, the most widely admired woman in America. Addams revolutionized American social reform by founding Hull House, an institution she established in a poor neighborhood of Chicago to provide services for recent immigrants—such as classes in music and literature. Addams later became the first [...]