About Nancy Cunard
Nancy Clare Cunard, born March 10, 1896 in Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, UK and died March 16, 1965 in Paris, was an English poet, writer, editor, publisher, political activist and anarchist. Born in Britain into a wealthy family, she staunchly rejects family values ??and devotes most of her life to fighting racism and fascism. A great collector of African art, she became the muse of many writers and artists of the 1920s and 1930s, including Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Louis Aragon, who were among her lovers, as well Constantin Brâncu?i, Eugene McCown, Langston Hughes, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams. She published her first volumes of poetry, Outlaws (1921), followed by Sublunary (1923) and Parallax in 1925. Aldous Huxley was one of her lovers and she became his muse. The latter also applied to Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Wyndham Lewis and Tristan Tzara. During her time in Paris, many poems were written that were eventually published in a collection. In 1927, Cunard bought the old farmhouse La Maison du Puits Carré in La Chapelle-Réanville, Haute-Normandie - where she invited well-known artists and writers.Wanting to support experimental poetry and provide young authors with a more profitable market, she created in 1928 The Hours Press which published Samuel Beckett's first separately work, a poem called Whoroscope (1930). She also published Pound's XXX Cantos, and the first French translation of Lewis Carroll's La Chasse au Snark, with the help of Louis Aragon (1929). By 1931, Wyn Henderson had taken over the management of the publishing house, and the same year published its last book, The Revaluation of Obscenity by sexologist Havelock Ellis.
In the year that she founded her publishing house, she met the African-American jazz pianist Henry Crowder (1890-1955). The two fell in love and ended up living together. The mere fact that her daughter was dating an African American man caused excitement and outrage from Nancy's mother. In addition, the "salon rebel" began to officially campaign against racism. She published anthologies with black writers, which made headlines in the press and drew the attention of the Ku Klux Klan to the publisher, among others. She received threats and hate mail, and her own mother reported her to the police. But the young woman was not intimidated by this. In addition to her commitment against racial segregation, she also fought against fascism.
In the last years of her life, she suffered from mental problems and her physical health deteriorated. She died in Cochin Hospital at the age of 69.
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