For her centenary (February 22, 2017), the most complete edition everpublished of the brilliant modernist writings and evocative letters of an LGBT pioneer.

Though Jane Bowles published only one novel, one play, and a handful ofstories, her genius for spare prose and vivid dialogue had an outsized influence onher contemporaries. Tennessee Williams called her the most important writer ofprose fiction in modern American letters ; for John Ashbery she was one of thefinest modern writers of fiction in any language. Now, on the occasion of hercentenary, Library of America presents the most complete edition ever publishedof Bowles’s incomparable fiction, along with an extensive selection of her frank,vivid, and funny letters. Two Serious Ladies (1943), based partly on herhoneymoon in Mexico with her husband, the writer and composer Paul Bowles,follows two bourgeois American women in Panama as they jettison sexual andcultural norms in search of happiness- Christina Goering, a wealthy spinster whobecomes a high-class prostitute; and newlywed Frieda Copperfield, who finds loveand comfort in the arms of a young Panamanian girl. In The Summer House (1954),a play about two mothers, one selfish and ruthless, despising her dreamydaughter, the other gentle, dominated by her strong-minded daughter, wasperformed on Broadway in 1953 and reflects Bowles’s complicated relationshipwith her own mother. The volume also includes five short stories, two song lyrics,a puppet play, and the nonfiction sketch East Side- North Africa. (Paul Bowles'srewrite of East Side- North Africa, published in 1966, under Jane’s name, as theshort story Everything Is Nice, is also included as an appendix), as well asfragments from two abandoned novels, a section of Two Serious Ladies cut froman earlier draft, four abandoned stories, one unfinished play, and oneautobiographical fragment. Rounding out the volume are 133 letters, includingcandid portraits of such friends and acquaintances as John Ashbery, WilliamBurroughs, Ira Gershwin, Allen Ginsberg, Carson McCullers, Sylvia Plath, PaulRobeson, Susan Sontag, Gertrude Stein, Gore Vidal, Eudora Welty, and TennesseeWilliams. The letters are introduced with headnotes by editor Millicent Dillon, plus10 pages of photographs have been reproduced from the original edition of theletters.

LIBRARY OF AMERICAis an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.