JANET FLANNER
(1892 – 1978)
JOURNALIST ::: POLITICS: :::
Janet Flanner was one of the most distinctive voices in twentieth-century journalism. Born in Indianapolis, she moved to Paris in 1925 just as The New Yorker began publication. The magazine’s founder, Harold Ross, hired her as its Paris correspondent. Writing under the pen name Genêt, she began the famous column Letter from Paris, which she continued for nearly fifty years. Her work combined elegant literary style with sharp reporting, turning cultural observation into a form of journalism that felt almost like essays or short stories.
Flanner arrived in Paris during the height of the expatriate artistic boom often called the Lost Generation. Writers, painters, dancers, and intellectuals filled the cafés of the Left Bank, gathering at places such as Les Deux Magots and nearby literary salons. Although she knew many of the famous figures of the era, Flanner’s role was different from novelists like Ernest Hemingway or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Instead of turning Paris into fiction, she documented the city’s real cultural and political life—covering art movements, theater, ballet, and dramatic political events such as the Stavisky Affair that shook France in the 1930s.
Personally, Flanner lived much of her life in a long partnership with writer Solita Solano, and together they became part of the cosmopolitan intellectual community of interwar Paris. Her columns captured the atmosphere of Europe between the world wars and later during the postwar era, making her one of the most important interpreters of European culture for American readers. By the time she retired in the 1970s, Flanner had helped define the voice of The New Yorker and established a model for modern literary journalism—observant, stylish, and deeply informed by the cultural life of the city she loved.
