Acknowledgments

This project has been many years in the making, and many people and institutions have been vital in making it a reality.

I want to thank Karen Clark, the late niece of Jane Heap, who met with me in Heap’s old stomping grounds in Chicago and shared photos and letters along with family stories of her iconoclastic aunt. I have interviewed the students of George Gurdjieff, the Armenian mystic whom Anderson and Heap followed, in Oregon communes, Utah canyons, New Jersey suburbs, and the United Kingdom. Anna Lou Stalevey, Dr. John Lester, Eleanor Hudson, and Nesta Brookings, all former students of Jane Heap from the London blitz of World War II until she died in 1964, sat down with me in London for many conversations. James Moore, author of Gurdjieff: Anatomy of a Myth, who also knew Heap, shared conversations and correspondence over several years. The role of Jane Purse in donating her private collection of Heap letters to the University of Delaware lead to the publication of my book Dear Tiny Heart: The Letters of Jane Heap and Florence Reynolds, which I still mine as a resource for this current work. Those letters and other valuables can be found in Special Collections and Archives at the University of Delaware. Thank you to Rebecca Johnson Melvin for her assistance over the years.

Purse, Moore, Brookings, Hudson, Lester, and Stalevey were all elderly during my interviews, and all have since passed away. However, I treasure the time they spent with me and hope they would find this project a fitting exploration of the entire life of their spiritual mentor.

Dr. Hugh Ford, the author of Four Lives in Paris, knew Margaret Anderson and met with me in his book store in Bernardsville, NJ, where Anderson and her partner Georgette LeBlanc spent a memorable summer. In addition, Dr. Jackson Bryer, who wrote his dissertation on the Little Review in 1965, recounted his memories of meeting Anderson in her later years and shared her personal correspondence with me.

Many libraries made research materials available to me, including Beinecke Library, Yale University; Houghton Library, Harvard University; the New York Public Library; the Library of Congress; Butler Library, Columbia University; Newberry Library; the Indiana State Library; and the libraries of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Maryland, Cornell University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, the Art Institute of Chicago, Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka State Hospital, and Western College for Women Alumnae Association.

Dr. Kathleen Kennedy, head of the Department of History of Missouri State University, has been extraordinarily patient and supportive both as a boss and a friend. She has been a stalwart ally over many upheavals and challenges. I am also happy to be able to deliver this book to Dean Victor Matthews. He has gone above and beyond in his role as dean with innumerable acts of kindness as well. I want to thank the College of Humanities and Public Affairs and Missouri State University for funding two sabbaticals and multiple conferences and research trips to England and France.

Margaret von der Heide and Jordan Bolin Endicott provided much needed support during the beginning of this project. Glena Admire was crucial in organizing the final stages of the manuscript. Michele Lansdown of Nelrod Publishing was a diligent copyeditor who sharpened my style and saved me from errors. Cara Jordan of Flatpage and her crew, Elizabeth Stern, James Toftness, and Kaylee Alexander, did a superb job of securing permissions and editing and formatting the final manuscript. Thank you to Rubi Rose Siblo Landsman of Rubi Rose Photography of Kingston, NY, for her creative input. Thank you to Nancy Stokes for her technical savvy.

A special thank you to Gayla Graven, Marybeth Primm, Sara Newhard, and the late Susan Wilder for their special type of insight and reassurance. Thank you to the rainbow folks of Light at the End of Tunnel for listening to me rant about this project for years. Thank you to Avigayil Landsman for a lifetime of friendship.

Thank you to Amy Farranto of Northern Illinois University Press, for her tireless support and insightful observations. Thank you to Jennifer Savran Kelly of Cornell University Press for her expertise.Thank you to my mother Bonnie Baggett for her unconditional love and for coming to the rescue more times than I can count.

This book is dedicated to two significant people in my life. First, my late sister Kelly was always a special bulwark of support. Along with our brother Curtis J. Baggett, she was always in my corner. Anne M. Boylan, professor emeritus of the University of Delaware, has been a paragon of encouragement. I was her first Ph.D. student, and she has remained an advisor for decades. Over the years, into her retirement, she continued to counsel, reassure, and act as a much-needed beacon of hope and faith.