“All the Girls”

Abstract

This previously unpublished essay by the late author argues that male biographers of Williams have been unfair in their accounts of the women in Williams’s life and counters claims commonly made in previous Williams biographies concerning the nature of Williams’s relationship with specific female friends. Williams’s relationship to his wife, Florence Williams is also seen to be built on mutual understanding and loyalty despite published claims of infidelity which are directly refuted here by focusing in detail on the nature of Williams’s relationships with, in particular, Evelyn Scott, Nancy Cunard, Myra Marini, Kathleen Hoagland, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Marion Strobel. The use by Williams’s most recent biographer, Herbert Leibowitz, of poems as “biographical evidence” to support his claims is also countered through close readings of the same poems.