Born in Buffalo, New York, on February 26, 1879, Mabel Ganson was educated in private schools. From 1900 until his accidental death two years later she was married to Carl Evans, also of Buffalo. In 1903, while visiting Europe, she married Edwin Dodge, a Boston architect with whom she lived in the Villa Curonia, near Florence, until 1912. There she created in her home a remarkable salon frequented by such members of the international set as Eleonora Duse, Isadora Duncan, and other artists.
After her return to the United States and her divorce from Dodge she settled in New York City, where again her home became a principal meeting place for liberal intellectuals and radical artists and agitators. Frequent guests included John Reed, Lincoln Steffens, Amy Lowell, Walter Lippmann, Margaret Sanger, and Max Eastman. She was a major force behind the organization of the epochal Armory Show of Post-impressionist artists in 1913. In 1916 she married Maurice Sterne, an artist.
In 1918 Dodge moved to Taos, New Mexico, where a colony of artists had grown up in recent years. There again she became a hostess of note. In 1923, having divorced Sterne, she married Tony Luhan, a Pueblo Indian. Doubtless the most famous of her international guests in Taos was D. H. Lawrence, who was there for long visits in 1922╨1923 and 1924╨1925. In 1932 she described in intimate and sometimes painful detail her relations with Lawrence and his wife in Lorenzo in Taos. There followed four volumes of autobiography, collectively entitled Intimate Memories: Background, 1933, European Experiences, 1935, Movers and Shakers, 1936, and Edge of Taos Desert, 1937. She also wrote Winter in Taos, 1935, and Taos and Its Artists, 1947. She died in Taos, New Mexico, on August 13, 1962.
