Title: My First Cousin Once Removed
First published: 1998
Description: Sarah Payne Stuart grew up in a family of aristocratic lineage whose fortune had long ago been lost. (Among the many family documents cited is a Boston Globe article in which Lowell's bankrupt grandfather is quoted in his will as having left his children their good breeding and Boston heritage.) Stuart's upbringing carried with it a heady sense of privilege and entitlement, but without the money to back it up.

This dichotomy - of being both anointed and strapped, of needing to keep up a brave front at all costs, even when members of successive generations of the family (including the author's brother and famous cousin) find themselves locked up in mental wards - forms the heart of this story.

An irreverent and clear-sighted meditation on the claustrophobic yet seductive bonds of family, as well as an intimate portrait of a famous man, My First Cousin Once Removed is a wry and haunting story of survival in the midst of instability and dynastic decline.
Subjects: American Poets, Aristocracy (Social class), Biography, Economic conditions, Family, Family relationships, History, Mental illness, Poets, American, Families, Poetry (poetic works by one author), United states, biography
Places: Boston, Boston (Mass.), Massachusetts
People: Lowell family, Robert Lowell (1917-1977), Winslow family
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3523.O89 Z875 1998