Caresse Crosby: From Black Sun to Roccasinibalda

This admiring, undiscriminating biography by a freelance writer breathlessly follows the career of the American beauty who invented the brassiere to wear at her New York society debut in 1910. Divorced from an alcohol-prone husband by whom she had two children, Mary Phelps Jacob (1892-1970) married Harry Crosby, who gave her the name Caresse and with whom she lived profligately in Paris, wrote poetry and published Joyce, Eliot and Pound in her Black Sun Press. After Harry killed himself and his girlfriend in 1929, Caresse, ``always partial to titles,'' never ceased her quest for adventure and numerous lovers. She ran a gallery of modern art in wartime Washington, published a cultural magazine, espoused the cause of world citizenship, and later, as ``principessa'' of Roccasinibaldasp? diff't from title/glad you caught that.gs , a 72-room ruined castle outside Rome, entertained young literati for whom, with limited funds, she ``could make a Renaissance meal out of a package of soup and a poetry reading.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Nov.)