Get Free Shipping on orders over $89
Bebo : A Portrait of My Mother - David Chandler

Bebo

A Portrait of My Mother

By: David Chandler

Paperback | 8 November 2021

At a Glance

Paperback


$29.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $7.50 with

Ships in 5 to 7 business days

For this absorbing portrait of his mother, David Chandler drew on hundreds of letters that she sent and received, on his own warm memories, and the many and copious medical records from her hospitalizations in 1937 and 1963, afflicted with what were then called nervous breakdowns.

Gabrielle Chanler, nicknamed Bebo as a small child, was born into the upper reaches of New York society, deftly described in the novels of Edith Wharton, a life-long friend of Bebo's mother. Educated at a Catholic boarding school in London and in art schools in New York and Paris, Bebo added a "d" to her name when she married Porter Chandler, a lawyer who later became a became a partner in a New York law firm. David was the third of the Chandlers' four children.

In the 1930s Bebo campaigned against Prohibition, supported the Catholic Worker movement and served on the board of the Museum of Modern Art. After the war she worked with the Third Hour, an ecumenical movement.

For the last 10 years of Bebo was nourished by her companionable marriage, her wide circle of friends and by her profound religious faith. After her death of cancer in 1958 Bebo's friends and relatives recalled her intense intellectual curiosity, her convivial sense of the absurd, her interest in people, and her joie de vivre, which was especially intense because it was thrown off balance from time to time by what Bebo called "bouts of edginess and melancholy".

More in Biographies

Love Like This : A Memoir - Natalie Bassingthwaighte

RRP $36.99

$26.99

27%
OFF
Bread of Angels - Patti Smith

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
The Mushroom Tapes : Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial - Helen Garner
Start With Yourself : A New Vision for Work & Life - Emma Grede
Sink or Swim - Alexa Leary

SIGNED COPY

Paperback

RRP $36.99

$24.99

32%
OFF
The Titanic Story of Evelyn - Lisa Wilkinson

RRP $34.99

$26.99

23%
OFF
Ain't Nobody's Fool : The Life and Times of Dolly Parton - Martha Ackmann
Being Patient : Close Encounters in Cancer World - Na'ama Carlin

RRP $34.99

$29.99

14%
OFF
Stripped Down : Unfiltered and Unapologetic - Bunnie Xo

RRP $34.99

$28.75

18%
OFF
Errol Flynn : The true story of Australia's Hollywood icon - Patricia O'Brien
Not Just a Bunnings Man : The life and times of Tom (G.M.) Bunning - Joseph Christensen
Memorial Days : Shortlisted for the 2026 Stella Prize - Geraldine Brooks