LONDRAVILLE, Janis 1949-
(Janis Swan Londraville)

PERSONAL:

Born September 24, 1949, in Albany, NY; daughter of Roland John and Clara Eugenia Huddleston; married Clark Aimoku Slayter, May 31, 1974 (divorced, April, 1987); married Richard John Londraville, October 10, 1987. Education: Keuka College, B.A., 1971; College of St. Rose, M.A., 1973; University of Hawaii, postgraduate study, 1978, 1984. Politics: Republican. Religion: Methodist. Hobbies and other interests: Equestrian sports.

ADDRESSES:

Home and office—P.O. Box 180, Colton, NY 13625-0180. Office—State University of New York at Potsdam, 44 Pierrepont Ave., Potsdam, NY 13676.

CAREER:

Union College, Schenectady, NY, researcher with the Character Research Project, 1973-74; Chaminade University, Honolulu, HI, lecturer, 1976-78; Hawaii School for Girls, Honolulu, English teacher, 1978-79; Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Kamuela, teacher and director of drama and speech, 1979; State University of New York at Potsdam, instructor in English, 1988—. Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley, fellow at the Center for Independent Scholars.

MEMBER:

National Forensic League, Hawaii Speech League, Pi Delta Epsilon, Sigma Tau Delta.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1986, and the Council for Basic Education, 1987.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) On Poetry, Painting, and Politics: The Letters of May Morris and John Quinn, Susquehanna University Press (Selinsgrove, PA), 1997.

(Editor, with husband, Richard Londraville) Too Long a Sacrifice: The Letters of Maud Gonne and John Quinn, foreword by Anna MacBride White, Susquehanna University Press (Selinsgrove, PA), 1999.

(With Richard Londraville) Dear Yeats, Dear Pound,

Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends, foreword by William M. Murphy, Syracuse University Press (Syracuse, NY), 2001.

(Editor, with Richard Londraville) John Quinn: Selected Irish Writers from His Library, Locust Hill Press (West Cornwall, CT), 2001.

(Editor) Prodigal Father Revisited: Artists and Writers in the World of John Butler Yeats, Locust Hill Press (West Cornwall, CT), 2003.

(With Richard Londraville) The Most Beautiful Man in the World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol, foreword by Emily W. Leider, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2006.

Contributor to the Journal of Modern Literature, Yeats Annual, and English Literature in Translation.

SIDELIGHTS:

Janis and Richard Londraville are a husband-and-wife team of literary scholars. Since 1999 they have worked together on a number of books, focusing generally on the men and women of the Modernist period. Their first book together is Too Long a Sacrifice: The Letters of Maud Gonne and John Quinn, which they edited. The book collects letters written from 1906 to 1921 between Gonne, who was a political activist in Ireland, and her longtime friend Quinn, an Irish-American with an interest in Irish literature. The two had a wide-ranging correspondence, discussing literature, politics, and war, among other topics. As Denise J. Stankovics explained in Library Journal, the Londravilles tie the letters together and set them in their historical context in the chapter introductions and in "copious notes containing explanations of concepts alluded to in the letters."

The Londravilles are also the authors of Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends, a biography of the late poet and editor. Although Foster published her own poetry and edited two literary journals (the American Review of Reviews and Transatlantic Review), as the Londravilles explain, her largest impact on the American literary scene was in her attempts to foster the careers of the men around her. Those men included John Quinn (of Too Long a Sacrifice) and the three writers of the title: William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, and Ford Madox Ford. The Londravilles conducted interviews with Foster before her death, and many of their notes and letters from her went into the book. They "have written an intriguing profile of a multilayered personality that literary scholars will relish," Robert L. Kelly concluded in Library Journal. Those scholars will also "appreciate the amount of primary material here," commented a Publishers Weekly critic.

Outside of the world of literary scholarship, the Londravilles may be best known for The Most Beautiful Man in the World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol. In this "highly readable biography," as Jack Helbig described it in Booklist, the Londravilles trace Swan's life from his conservative Nebraska childhood; through his time as a well-known dancer, artist, and actor; to his old age, when he became an eccentric, often mocked figure in heavy makeup. Although the Londravilles mention Swan's later years, they "don't focus on these oddities," noted a Publishers Weekly contributor. Instead, as Carol J. Binkowski explained in Library Journal, they "present Swan's full story, carefully tracing his professional accomplishments and contributions." The result, concluded a Kirkus Reviews critic, is "a portrait fascinating in its details and themes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, March 15, 2006, Jack Helbig, review of The Most Beautiful Man in the World: Paul Swan, from Wilde to Warhol, p. 14.

Hollywood Reporter, January 23, 2006, Gerald Bartell, "Something for Every Actor: Hellman, Swan, and Rapp," p. 16.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2006, review of The Most Beautiful Man in the World, p. 75.

Library Journal, July, 1999, Denise J. Stankovics, review of Too Long a Sacrifice: The Letters of Maud Gonne and John Quinn, p. 104; January, 2002, Robert L. Kelly, review of Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford: Jeanne Robert Foster and Her Circle of Friends, p. 104; February 1, 2006, Carol J. Binkowski, review of The Most Beautiful Man in the World, p. 80.

Publishers Weekly, October 29, 2001, review of Dear Yeats, Dear Pound, Dear Ford, p. 51; January 9, 2006, review of The Most Beautiful Man in the World, p. 46.

Sarasota Herald Tribune, August 29, 2003, "Venice Couple Pens Book on 'Most Beautiful Man,'" p. BV4.

ONLINE

State University of New York at Potsdam Web site,http://www.potsdam.edu/ (September 27, 2006), biographical information on Janis and Richard Londraville.*