DAVENPORT, MARCIA (June 9, 1903--January 16, 1996)

American novelist, was born in New York City, the daughter of Alma Gluck, the celebrated lyric soprano, and an insurance  salesman who, as she wrote in her autobiography, was soon "eliminated" from her mother's life. She was raised in extraordinary musical surroundings, spending most of her early years on operatic and recital tour around the United States and Europe with her formidable mother, to whom she was very close. In this way she met Gustav Mahler, Arturo Toscanini, who became a lifelong friend, the violinist Efrem Zimbalist (her mother's second husband), George Gershwin, and scores of others in the world of music. She was educated, somewhat sporadically, at private schools in Pennsylvania and at Wellesley College and the University of Grenoble. In 1922 she dropped out of Wellesley, eloped to Pittsburgh, had a baby and, by 1923, was divorced.

Despite her musical background and connections, she had decided quite early that she wanted to be a writer. To support herself and her daughter she took a job first as an advertising copywriter and then, as a staff writer for The New Yorker. In 1930, with the encouragement of Maxwell Perkins, she left The New Yorker to work on a biography of Mozart, which Scribners published to excellent reviews two years later. During the 1930s she worked as a freelance writer and lecturer on music, as the music critic for Stage magazine, and as a commentator for the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. As an author of Max Perkins she soon became friends with two others of his authors, Thomas Wolfe and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Davenport's career as a novelist began in 1936, when Of Lena Geyer was published. This story of the rise and fall of a great diva was obviously based on models close to home, although the author denied this.  

Principal Works: Novels--Of Lena Geyer, 1936 (in U.K.: Lena Geyer); The Valley of Decision, 1942; East Side, West Side, 1947; My Brother's Keeper, 1954; The Constant Image, 1960. Biography--Mozart, 1932. Autobiography--Too Strong for Fantasy, 1967. Juvenile--Garibaldi, Father of Modern Italy, 1957.

About: The autobiographical material quoted above was written for Twentieth Century Authors First Supplement, 1955. American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide From Colonial Times to the Present, 1979; Current Biography 1944; Twentieth Century Romance and Historical Writers, 2nd ed., 1990. Periodicals--New Yorker April 22, 1991.