Highlights of a Life

In the 1920s, as flappers seized their independence to vote and smoke, an avant-garde group of American expatriates were experimenting with their craft as writers. This circle of friends living in Europe, later labeled the “lost generation,” included Kay Boyle.

Prosperous and progressive family

Born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in1902 and raised in Cincinnati, Boyle’s family was financially secure. Her father was a lawyer/businessman, and her mother, a literary and political activist, believed that the privileged class had an obligation to social responsibility. Throughout her life, Boyle was guided by a social conscience that grew from the values instilled by her mother, who once ran for the Cincinnati School Board on the liberal Farmer-Labor ticket.

Her mother, Katherine Evans Boyle, not only exposed her daughters to liberal political activism, but also introduced them to the works of James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and others.

The mother of six children, Kay Boyle published more than 40 books, including 14 novels, eight volumes of poetry, 11 collections of short fiction, and three children's books.

Married Frenchman

Boyle studied violin at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music before settling in New York City in 1922. There she found work as a writer/editor with a small magazine, Broom, which promoted experimentation in literary work. This experience marked the beginning of her long association with avant-garde publications. Soon after moving to New York, Boyle met and married Richard Brault, an exchange student from France. In 1923 the couple moved to France, where, despite the break-up of the marriage that took her there, she remained for nearly 20 years, mingling with the expatriate community and producing several books. Because she married a French citizen, the laws of that time forced Boyle to accept her husband’s nationality. It was more than a decade before Boyle’s U.S. citizenship was restored.

Radical writing

Boyle’s writing drew heavily from personal experiences. Her earlier works reflect her lifelong search for love and her interest in power struggles between men and women. When they were published, her stories were considered “experimental” because of the unconventional nature of the themes she explored, such as a woman’s search for a context in which to belong. While she was praised for her avant-garde style, others said her stories didn’t meet the need for more substantive fiction.

First child born out of wedlock

While separated from Brault, Kay Boyle had a love affair with Ernest Walsh, editor of the literary magazine, This Quarter, to which Boyle contributed. Within a year, Walsh died, leaving Boyle pregnant with his child. She moved to Paris with her infant daughter, and the joined the community of avant-garde artists and writers there. Through her association with literary magazines, she became acquainted with such notable figures as James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Harry and Caresse Crosby. In fact, her first book of fiction, titled Short Stories, was published in 1929 by the Crosbys’ Black Sun Press.

Traveled widely with second husband

In 1928 she met Laurence Vail, who was married to Peggy Guggenheim, the wealthy patron of the arts whose father Benjamin had gone down with the Titanic. In 1932, after her divorce from Brault and Vail’s from Guggenheim, Boyle married Laurence Vail. The couple had three children. Throughout the 1930s Boyle and her family traveled between France, Austria and England; she continued to write and publish novels and short stories.

Explored daring themes

In 1934 Boyle won her first O. Henry Memorial Award for the short story "The White Horses of Vienna."  Literary experts contend that this story – about two doctors working together in the mountains of Austria – exemplifies much of Boyle's writing because it expresses the need for art to engage with political and social issues.

Events in Germany compelled Boyle to write Death of a Man (1936), a novel that attacked Nazism and brought it to the attention of the American public. While expatriates in mid-1930s Europe were informed about Hitler’s rise to power, back in the States most Americans were not awakened to the problem.

Married baron in U.S. foreign service

After nearly 20 years living abroad, Boyle moved back to the States in 1941. Her escalating passion for politics attracted Boyle to Baron Joseph von Franckenstein who, like Boyle, shared her sense of urgency about political events. She grew intolerant of Vail, criticizing her husband for regarding fascism as just another phase of history. She divorced Vail in 1943 and married Baron Joseph von Franckenstein the same year. Together they had two children.

Inspired by her mother to fight for human rights and the dignity of the individual, Boyle made politics a recurring theme in her writing post-World War II. Her fiction, including a series of novels about the French Resistance and the German occupation of France, was both criticized and praised for supporting social liberal causes.

Blacklisted during McCarthyism

In the early 1950s, the couple fell victim to McCarthyism. Suspected of being communist sympathizers, von Franckenstein lost his job with the State Department and Boyle was fired from her post as foreign correspondent for The New Yorker, a post she had held for six years. What’s more, Boyle was blacklisted from most major magazines.

Driven by unfair treatment and inspired by her progressive upbringing, Boyle became a champion for social justice. As the Cold War heated up, she spoke out against segregation, nuclear weapons, and the war in Vietnam.

Professor/protester

After von Franckenstein’s death in 1963, Boyle was offered a teaching position at San Francisco State College. She remained on the creative writing faculty until 1979. During the 60s and 70s she was heavily involved with the anti-war movement. She was arrested twice and imprisoned for her involvement in war protests.

Even into old age, Boyle continued to fight for human rights. She was active in Amnesty International and worked for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Boyle died in 1992 at her retirement home in California.

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