In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life.
A charming and insightful glimpse into.
As Reed points out, one resident who identified herself as an "artist" on the 1920 federal census gave her occupation in 1930 as "saleslady, real estate," reflecting the decline of an active artistic class.
Predictably, this gentrification drove out many of the working artists and writers who had helped revive the area.
The positive developments from this French Quarter renaissance, however, attracted attention and visitors, inspiring the historic preservation and commercial revitalization that turned the area into a tourist destination.
Though some of the bohemians were relatively progressive, and many employed African American material in their own work, few of them knew or cared about what was going on across town among the city's black intellectuals and artists.
But unlike most bohemias, the one in New Orleans existed as a whites-only affair.
These men and women also helped to establish New Orleans institutions such as the Double Dealer literary magazine, the Arts and Crafts Club, and Le Petit Theatre.
But with Reed's commentary, these profiles serve as an entry into the world of artists and writers that dined on Decatur Street, attended masked balls, and blatantly ignored the Prohibition Act.
The title served as a rather obscure joke: Sherwood was not a Creole and neither were most of the people featured.
Reed begins with Faulkner and Spratling's self-published homage to their fellow bohemians, "
Sherwood Anderson and Other Famous Creoles."
The book contained 43 sketches of New Orleans artists, by Spratling, with captions and a short introduction by Faulkner.
A young William Faulkner and his roommate William Spratling, an artist who taught at Tulane University, resided among the "artful and crafty ones of the French Quarter."
In Dixie Bohemia John Shelton Reed introduces Faulkner's circle of friends -- ranging from the distinguished Sherwood Anderson to a gender-bending Mardi Gras costume designer -- and brings to life the people and places of New Orleans in the Jazz Age.
By the 1920s Jackson Square had become the center of a vibrant if short-lived bohemia.
In the years following World War I, the New Orleans French Quarter attracted artists and writers with its low rents, faded charm, and colorful street life
