Hortense Flexner
{{short description|American poet}}
Hortense Flexner King (April 12, 1885 – September 28, 1973) was an American poet, playwright, and professor.
Life
She attended Bryn Mawr College. She graduated from the University of Michigan, with a B.A. in 1907, and a M.A. in 1910.{{cite web|url=http://www.maine.gov/msl/maine/writdisplay.shtml?id=94810|title=A Maine Writer: Maine State Library}}
She worked for the Louisville Herald. She worked with her sisters, Jennie Maas Flexner and Carolyn A. Flexner, in getting the vote out in Louisville when Kentucky women won the right to vote in school board elections in 1912.{{cite web |last1=Allen |first1=Ann |title=Jennie Maas Flexner, 1882-1994: Louisville Librarian and Suffragist |url=https://networks.h-net.org/node/2289/discussions/5062528/jennie-maas-flexner-1882-1994-louisville-librarian-and-suffragist |website=H-Kentucky |publisher=H-Net Commons |accessdate=18 October 2019}}
She married Wyncie King (1884–1961).
They moved to Philadelphia. He was a contributor to the Saturday Evening Post.
She taught at Bryn Mawr, from 1926 to 1940, and at Sarah Lawrence College from 1942 to 1950.{{cite web |url=http://www.slc.edu/magazine/money/fromthearchives.php |title=Sarah Lawrence Magazine: The Value of Money |publisher=Slc.edu |accessdate=2011-08-11 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522191038/http://www.slc.edu/magazine/money/fromthearchives.php |archivedate=2011-05-22 }} They were friends of Susan Clay Sawitzky,{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dbLRU_0bt0kC&dq=Wyncie+King&pg=PA184| title=Cautious rebel: a biography of Susan Clay Sawitzky | first= Lindsey| last= Apple| publisher= Kent State University Press| year= 1997| isbn= 978-0-87338-579-4}} and Martha Gellhorn.{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=83DHziZQZ_gC&dq=Wyncie+King&pg=PA292| title=Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life | first= Caroline| last= Moorehead| publisher= Macmillan| year= 2004 | isbn= 978-0-8050-7696-7}}
In 1961, she returned to Louisville.{{cite book|last=Kleber|first=John E.|title=The encyclopedia of Louisville|year=2001|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|isbn=978-0-8131-2890-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pXbYITw4ZesC&dq=Hortense+Flexner+King&pg=PA484}}
Marguerite Yourcenar translated her poetry into French.{{cite journal|jstor=40838379|title=Une femme obscure: Marguerite Yourcenar Translates Hortense Flexner|first=Jeanine S.|last=Alesch|date=1 January 2007|journal=Dalhousie French Studies|volume=78|pages=83–106}}
Her papers are held at the University of Louisville.{{cite web|title=Hortense Flexner (King) Papers|url=http://louisville.edu/library/archives/findingaids/flexner.html|publisher=University of Louisville|accessdate=23 April 2013}}
She is buried alongside her husband in the Sutton Island Cemetery, in Cranberry Isles, Maine.
Works
;Poetry
- Clouds and Cobblestones 1920.
- The Stubborn Root and Other Poems (1930)
- North Window and Other Poems (1943)
- Poems (1961)
- Selected Poems (1963), with an introduction by English poet Laurie Lee
- Marguerite Yourcenar (ed.) Presentation Critique d'Hortense Flexner Suivie d'un Choix de Poems (1969),
- The Selected Poems of Hortense Flexner (1975)
- Half a Star: Poems by Hortense Flexner
;Plays
- Voices (1916)
- Mahogany (1921)
- The Faun (1921)
- The Broken God
- The Road
- The Little Miracle
- Three Wise Men of Gotham
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- https://archive.today/20130626181417/http://www.slc.edu/magazine/money/fromthearchives.html
- https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=14418 Scrapbook Before 1929: Hortense Flexner "Are You Too Old to Learn ?..."
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Category:University of Michigan alumni
Category:Bryn Mawr College faculty
Category:Sarah Lawrence College faculty
Category:Writers from Louisville, Kentucky
Category:American women dramatists and playwrights
Category:20th-century American poets
Category:20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:American women academics
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