Eleanor Perényi

(1918 - 2009)

Born in Washington, DC, Eleanor Perényi, at the age of nineteen, married a Hungarian baron and assumed charge of his castle in Ruthenia, along with its vineyards, forests, English garden, and 750-acre farm. After her husband was conscripted into the Hungarian Army during World War II, she returned to America to raise her son while working as an editor at Harper’s Bazaar and Mademoiselle. She eventually retired to a seaside town in Connecticut, where she cultivated gardens and entertained literary guests, including Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bowen, and Truman Capote.