“Often considered minor Lost Generation celebrities, the Murphys were in fact much more than legendary party givers. Yet none of the artists who used the Murphys for their models fully captured the real story of their lives: their Edith Wharton childhoods, their unexpected youthful romance, their ten-year secret courtship, their complex and enduring marriage-and the tragedy that struck them, when the world they had created seemed most perfect.ĭrawing on a wealth of family diaries, photographs, letters and other papers, as well as on archival research and interviews on two continents, this “brilliantly rendered biography” documents the pivotal role of the Murphys in the story of the Lost Generation ( Los Angeles Times).

Far more than mere patrons, they were kindred spirits whose sustaining friendship released creative energy. The models for Nicole and Dick Diver in Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night, the Murphys also counted among their friends John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, Fernand Léger, Archibald MacLeish, Cole Porter, and a host of others. Sara Murphy, an enigmatic beauty who wore her pearls to the beach, enthralled and inspired Pablo Picasso (he painted her both clothed and nude), Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Gerald Murphy-witty, urbane, and elusive-was a giver of magical parties and an acclaimed painter.

Wealthy Americans with homes in Paris and on the French Riviera, Gerald and Sara Murphy were at the very center of expatriate cultural and social life during the modernist ferment of the 1920s. New York Times Bestseller: “A marvelously readable biography” of the couple and their relationships with Picasso, Fitzgerald, and other icons of the era ( The New York Times Book Review).

Everybody was so young by amanda vaill