Margaret Porter Collection

full finding aid and list of materials

The collection of materials was processed from 2011-2012 and is located in UCLA's Special Collections as part of their relationship with the Mazer. In addition to the UCLA finding aid, a shortened finding aid based on this collection was created by a UCLA student receiving their Masters in Library Science.

Read the UCLA Special Collections’ finding aid for the Margaret Porter Papers.

Read the student’s work.

An efficient way to search for specific materials within these finding aids is to use Ctrl+f (Windows computer) or Command+f (on a Mac).

BIOGRAPHy

Margaret Porter was born on April 11, 1911 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She began writing poetry at a young age and attended Marquette University where she continued to write poetry using the name Pierre E. Renet. Porter used this male pseudonym to write to a fantasy lover named, Alys, which she continued to do throughout her life. After graduating from Marquette University with a degree in journalism, Porter took the opportunity to drive to San Francisco and later hitchhiked throughout California with a friend. She wrote about her experiences on this journey extensively in her personal journals, which was a practice she maintained for roughly 60 years of her life.

Porter was a member of the Women’s Army Corps during WWII, which was a relatively safe space for many lesbians at that time to explore their gender and sexuality. After leaving the Women’s Army Corps, Porter took her first trip to France where she discovered the poetry of Renée Vivien and other expatriate poets such as Clifford Barney. Porter became engrossed in researching the lesbian poets of Paris in the turn of the century and continued this work for many years after. During this time, Porter began using the name Gabrielle L’Autre to write poetry with themes relating to lesbian love and intimacy.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Porter had her writing published in several small press publications such as The Archer, South and West, Tres Femme, and The Ladder. At this time Porter resided in Oceanside, California and was an active member of the lesbian political rights organization Daughters of Bilitis. She also co-founded the lesbian feminist groups Search and Tres Femme during this time. In the 1974 Porter published her work in the book White Heron: a collection of poems and in 1977 she became one of the first to publish English translations of Renée Vivien’s poetry in the book, Muse of the Violets. Porter died on May 30, 1989.

To learn more about Porter’s life and career, watch Angela Brinskele’s interview in The Mazer Memory Project video.