Her first novel, Fear of Flying , gained worldwide fame for Erica Jong as a writer about women's literary and sexual adventures. But the reputation of Fear of Flying has overshadowed Jong's achievements as a poet, social critic, and writer concerned with satire, Jewishness, and women's independence.

Like Isadora Wing in Fear of Flying , Erica Mann was born into a family of Jewish painters, musicians, and intellectuals and grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City. Eda Mirsky Mann was a painter; Seymour Mann, a musician and composer, was also an importer of giftware. As an adolescent, their daughter Erica wrote constantly, producing journals, notebooks, and stories she illustrated herself--but her heroes were always white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, with such names as Mitch Mitchell and Duane Blaine.

As a student at Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1963, Erica Mann edited the college literary magazine and...