Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley

The poet May Sarton's reputation took a nosedive after her death in 1995 and the unflattering biography (by Margot Peters) that followed. The publication of her tender, revealing letters has managed to arrest this decline. Susan Sherman, who edited Sarton's Selected Letters, 1916-1954, now offers insight into Sarton's most profound and affecting romance, with Juliette Huxley, the Swiss-born wife of the English scientist Sir Julian Huxley. May and Juliette met in 1936, while May was involved with Julian. Their love affair culminated in one passionate week in Paris in 1948, after which--hurt by May's angry threat that she would tell Julian--Juliette broke off the relationship. After Julian Huxley's death in 1976, they began to write one another again and kept in contact until Juliette's death. As May Sarton wrote in old age, "I have had many lovers, many friends since I was 25 and met Juliette Huxley, but none has so nourished the poet and the lover as she did, the incomparable one." The book includes drafts of introductions by May Sarton and excerpts from a few of Juliette Huxley's responses to Sarton. --Regina Marler