Mary Ann Caws (born 1933) is an American author, translator,art historian and literary critic.[1]
She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in Comparative Literature, English, French, Biography and Memoir, and Women's and Gender Studies at the Graduate School of theCity University of New York.[2] She is an expert onSurrealism andmodern English and French literature, having written biographies ofMarcel Proust,Virginia Woolf, andHenry James. She works on the interrelations of visual art and literary texts, has written biographies ofPablo Picasso andSalvador Dalí, and edited the diaries, letters, and source material of Joseph Cornell. She has also written onAndré Breton,Robert Desnos,René Char,Yves Bonnefoy,Robert Motherwell,[3] andEdmond Jabès. She served as the senior editor for theHarperCollins World Reader, and edited anthologies includingManifesto: A Century of Isms,Surrealism, and theYale Anthology of 20th-Century French Poetry. Among others, she has translatedStéphane Mallarmé,Tristan Tzara,Pierre Reverdy,André Breton,Paul Éluard,Robert Desnos, andRené Char.
Among the positions she has held are President, Association for Study of Dada and Surrealism, 1971–75 and President,Modern Language Association of America, 1983,Academy of Literary Studies, 1984–85, and the American Comparative Literature Association, 1989-91.
She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and a Fellow of theNew York Institute for the Humanities.
In October 2004, she published her autobiography,To the Boathouse: a Memoir (University Alabama Press),[4] and in November 2008, a cookbook memoir:Provençal Cooking: Savoring the Simple Life in France (Pegasus Books).[5]
Caws has contributed dozens of articles to theBrooklyn Rail.[6]
She was married toPeter Caws and is the mother of Hilary Caws-Elwitt and ofMatthew Caws, lead singer of the bandNada Surf. She was married to Dr. Boyce Bennett (d.2023).[7] She lives in New York City.
