Magnificent rebel : Nancy Cunard in Jazz Age Paris / Anne de Courcy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

De Courcy, Anne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cunard, Nancy, 1896-1965--Friends and associates.

Authors, English--20th century--Biography.

Women political activists--England--Biography.

Women journalists--England--Biography.

Publishers and publishing--France--Biography.

Cunard, Nancy, 1896-1965.

Authors, English.

Friendship.

Publishers and publishing.

Women journalists.

Women political activists.

England.

France.

Genre:

Biography.

Biographies.

Physical Description:

330 pages, 16 unnumbered leaves of unnumbered plates : illustrations ; 26 cm

Edition:

First U.S. edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 2023.

Summary:

"Anne de Courcy, the author of Husband Hunters and Chanel's Riviera, examines the controversial life of legendary beauty, writer and rich girl Nancy Cunard during her thirteen years in Jazz-Age Paris. Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship. Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother's lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy's father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard's early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965. Magnificent Rebel is a nuanced portrait of a complex woman, set against the backdrop of the City of Light during one of its most important and fascinating decades"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction

The friendship

Grown up

1919

a new era

Paris, and Michael Arlen

Ezra Pound, 1922

Aldous Huxley

Le Quartier

The life of the cafés

The birth of surrealism

Of writers and writing

Louis Aragon

Love and its difficulties

The hours press; Henry Crowder

Elsa and the power of will

Friendships

and the crash

Publishing success and the Beckett poem

The break with emerald

Black man, White ladyship

New York

Partings.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Athenaeum copy: Sargent fund bookplate.

ISBN:

9781250272560

1250272564

OCLC:

1310766400