Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby was born June 4, 1898, in Boston, and died on December 10, 1929, in New York City. A nephew of J. P. Morgan, Crosby was raised in Boston. During World War I he volunteered as an ambulance driver, witnessed the ravages of war, came close to being killed and earned the French Croix de Guerre. He settled as an expatriate in Paris after the war, and led an extravagant and bizarre life. He scandalized proper upper-crust Brahmin Boston by courting and marrying an already-married woman...See more

Harry Crosby was born June 4, 1898, in Boston, and died on December 10, 1929, in New York City. A nephew of J. P. Morgan, Crosby was raised in Boston. During World War I he volunteered as an ambulance driver, witnessed the ravages of war, came close to being killed and earned the French Croix de Guerre. He settled as an expatriate in Paris after the war, and led an extravagant and bizarre life. He scandalized proper upper-crust Brahmin Boston by courting and marrying an already-married woman who invented the bra and changed her name from Polly to Caresse. In 1927, he and Caresse founded Editions Narcisse to publish their own work. Editions Narcisse later became Black Sun Press, which published their poetry along with work by Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce and Kay Boyle, among others. These were fine limited editions of well-made books. Crosby was also a frequent contributor to the avant-garde literary magazine transitions, edited by Eugene Jolas. Crosby ended his life in a murder-suicide pack with his lover, Josephine Rotch Bigelow, in a friend's apartment in New York City. His other collections of poetry include Sonnets for Caresse and Transit of Venus. See less