Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley

In these extraordinary letters, we see May Sarton in all her complexities and are privy to her tangled relationship with Juliette Huxley, whom May considered her muse and the greatest love of her life. May Sarton’s love for Juliette Huxley, ignited that first moment she saw her in 1936, transcended sixty years of friendship, passion, rejection, silence, and reconciliation. The letters chart their meeting, May’s affair with Juliette’s husband Julian (brother of Aldous Huxley) before the war, her intense involvement with Juliette after the war, and the rich, ardent friendship that endured until Juliette’s death. While May’s intimate relationship with Julian was not a secret, May’s more powerful romance with Juliette was. May’s fiery passion was a seductive yet sometimes destructive force. Her feelings for and demands on Juliette were often overwhelming to them both. In fact, Juliette refused all contact with May for nearly twenty-five years. Their reconciliation, after Julian’s death, wasn’t so much a rekindling as it was a testament to the profound affinity between them. Theirs was a relationship rife with complications and misunderstandings but the deep love and compassion they shared for one another prevailed. Included in this book are Sarton’s original drafts of an introduction to these letters.