Eda Hurd Lord (July 30, 1907 – October 22, 1976) was an American writer and longtime companion of writer

Sybille Bedford Sybille Bedford, OBE (16 March 1911 – 17 February 2006) was a German-born English writer of non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award. Early life She was born as Sybille Aleid Elsa von ...

Early life

Eda Lord was born in

Durango Durango (), officially named Estado Libre y Soberano de Durango ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Durango; Tepehuán: ''Korian''; Nahuatl: ''Tepēhuahcān''), is one of the 31 states which make up the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico, situated i ...

, Mexico on July 30, 1907. Her father,

Harvey Lord Harvey Hurd Lord (August 13, 1878 in Evanston, Illinois – May 3, 1920 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American track and field athlete who competed at the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, France. Lord competed in the 400 metres. He placed third in hi ...

, was managing a mine there, but the family was forced to flee in late 1910 by the Mexican Revolution. She was the granddaughter of Eda Isadore Hurd (1854-1938) and George Sterling Lord (1850-1916). Her aunt was the visual artist Eda Lord Dixon (1876-1926). The novel "Childsplay" is an semi-autobiographical novel recounting in part Lord's life as a child living with her grandmother in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore (Chicago), North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Chicago Loop, Downtown Chicago, ...

. After her father's death in 1920, she went to live with her grandmother in

La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

, where she attended The Bishop's School and became friends with M. F. K. Fisher. She attended but did not graduate from Stanford University.

Career

Eda Lord is the author of three auto-biographical novels ''Childsplay'', ''A Matter of Choosing'', and ''Extenuating Circumstances''. She also wrote short stories published in the ''

Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Ph ...

'' and '' Harper's Bazaar''. From 1975 to 1976, she was District 12 Chairman of the Inner Wheel Club.

Personal life

Lord moved to France before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and was taken prisoner by the Germans for a short period as a citizen of an enemy country. Lord, openly lesbian, was the longtime companion of

, with whom she had a 20 years long relationship. According to ''Quicksands'', Bedford's biography, Lord was an alcoholic. In her book ''An Alphabet for Gourmets'', Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher admitted to have had an early schoolgirl crush on Eda Lord. She was friends with

Barbara Perkins Gamow Barbara Merrihew Perkins "Perky" Gamow (May 22, 1905 - December 1975) was an American publicist, editor and translator. Biography Barbara Merrihew Perkins was born in San Francisco, California, on May 22, 1905. In 1938, she married J. R. de la To ...

and some of her letters to Gamow are preserved in the ''George Gamow and Barbara Gamow Papers'' at the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The librar ...

. She was a lifelong smoker and contracted throat cancer. Soon after she had

hysterectomy Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus. It may also involve removal of the cervix, ovaries ( oophorectomy), Fallopian tubes ( salpingectomy), and other surrounding structures. Usually performed by a gynecologist, a hysterectomy may ...

surgery for a

hemorrhage Bleeding, hemorrhage, haemorrhage or blood loss, is blood escaping from the circulatory system from damaged blood vessels. Bleeding can occur internally, or externally either through a natural opening such as the mouth, nose, ear, urethra, vag ...

and in her weakened conditioned died soon after on October 22, 1976.

References

External links

"Eda Lord, Writing in the Margins"
The Neglected Books Page * {{DEFAULTSORT:Lord, Eda 1907 births 1976 deaths 20th-century American women writers American lesbian writers 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American novelists 20th-century American LGBT people American expatriates in Mexico