Heidi Ardizzone

An interesting biography about a fascinating figure: Belle da Costa Greene, who not only managed to become one of the very few women of prominence in the rare book/archival world of the early twentieth century, but did so while a mixed-race woman passing as white. Greene's father was the first Black man to graduate from Harvard, but she, her mother, and her siblings cut all apparent ties with the African American community in order to gain more social and economic opportunities.

Heidi Ardizzone is strong at showing how class, race, and gender intersected in the U.S. (and to a certain extent the western Europe) of the period, and at using the surviving letters which Greene wrote to her on-off lover, the art critic Bernard Berenson, to reconstruct something of her relationship. Ardizzone is less interested in—or perhaps limited by the surviving source material, it's difficult to tell—Greene's work as a medievalist and librarian, topics that I would have loved to know more about. As a medieval historian myself, I had heard of Greene and her legacy before I ever picked up this book, but I'm not sure based on what I read here that I quite have a handle on the arc of her career or why she became so influential—we get lots of quotations from Greene's love letters but nothing from, e.g. one of the manuscript catalogues she compiled which might have shown us something of her mastery of the field. On a prose level, this is also quite lumpy, with a lot of needless repetition that could have been cut to make for a stronger book. (Also, an eyebrow-raising number of typos in a professionally printed book—and I'm not just talking about the references to "Bell" Greene "per say.")

These quibbles aside, this is still an interesting look at the life of a woman who demanded notice even as she strove to remain elusive, and who seized the opportunities she could from a specific moment in U.S. history.… (más)

Too much of a minute-by-minute recounting of her life, with too little reflection on the meaning and values the people involved. Belle da Costa Greene had numerous sexual affairs with powerful men but the author doesn't consider that these relationships might have been strategic. She was vivacious and extremely competent, but she also treated people badly. Her lover was, as far as I can tell, a whiny unethical narcissist, yet the writer makes no judgments. Finally, 90% of the biography is based on her correspondence this lover, and she was not very critical of how that shaped the narrative. This biography was ultimately unsatisfying.… (más)

I was quite disappointed that this biography did not go into the librarianship and curatorial considerations that were involved in managing J.P. Morgan’s glorious collections, plus some of the specialized knowledge de Costa Greene obtained as she proceeded and/or what has been learned since that time.

I guess I was “misled” by the clever title, “An Illuminated Life”, which plays on the illuminated manuscripts she worked with but refers more so to the mysteries of her life that are "illuminated" by this book.

Granted, both Belle de Costa Greene and the clarified "mysteries" are quite striking and admirable.… (más)