Quote of the Day
Carcanet has always been the place to look for considerations of purely literary and intellectual merit. Its list relies on the vision and the faith and the energy of people who care about books, and values. It is thus as rare as it is invaluable.
Frederic Raphael
|
Subscribe to our mailing list
|
Nancy Cunard (1896 - 1965)
- About
- Reviews
Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon, who were among her lovers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader VK Krishna Menon. In later years, she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. She died at age 69, weighing only 26 kilos (57 pounds), in the Hôpital Cochin, Paris.
Praise for Nancy Cunard (1896 - 1965)
'There is plenty in the life to distract from the work, and recent efforts to bring her poetry back into view have suffered from disproportionate interest in her lovers, her money, her attire, her social status and the reverse Cinderella-arc of her fame and fortune. This new volume, which includes a substantial number of previously unpublished poems, gives her poetry the chance to free itself from the legend. It comes with an introduction by the editor, Sandeep Parmar, that is judicious and gossip-free; her clear-eyed advocacy situates Cunard's forty-odd years of work in its busy cultural and political contexts.' Patrick McGuinness, London Review of Books
'This important collection showcases the formal and thematic diversity of Cunard's work, and illuminates an extraordinary body of work which passionately documents the crucial episodes of the twentieth century.' The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society (UCL Press)
'A bold heroine of the battle against the inexpressible.' - Ramón J. Sender
'One of the major phenomena of history.' - William Carlos Williams
|
Share this...
The Carcanet Blog
PN Review 266: Editorial
read more
Ian Pople: Spillway: New and Selected Poems
read more
Peter Sansom: Lanyard
read more
PN Review 265: Under the Cover with Gregory O'Brien
read more
PN Review 265: Editorial
read more
Patrick Worsnip: On Translating Saba
read more
|
|