Nancy Cunard

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Standard Name: Cunard, Nancy
Birth Name: Nancy Cunard
NC was an early twentieth-century modernist poet, journalist, anthologist, biographer, and political activist whose life and literary career were closely intertwined. She was significant as a publisher as well as in these other roles.
Black and white photograph of Nancy Cunard. She is seated in a casual pose with elbows out, facing the camera, wearing a belted leather jacket, what looks like a cloche hat, and her trademark stack of African ivory bangles.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Samuel Beckett
Nancy Cunard 's massive anthology NEGRO, published on 15 February 1934, included nineteen items of poetry and prose translated from French by SB .
Federman, Raymond, and John Fletcher. Samuel Beckett. University of California Press, 1970.
94-5
Anthologization Zora Neale Hurston
ZNH was invited to contribute to Nancy Cunard 's landmark anthology Negro: An Anthology (1934). Six of Hurston's essays were included.
Harris, Trudier, editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 51. Gale Research, 1987.
51: 137
Cultural formation Laura Riding
As an American living in England in 1928 she was said by an American friend, Polly Antell , to have become very English,
Friedmann, Elizabeth. A Mannered Grace. Persea Books, 2005.
113
while Nancy Cunard thought her very tense, dominating, and quietly American...
Education Iris Tree
Sometime after 1904, IT and her next elder sister, Felicity, began attending Miss Wolff 's day school, an unconventional school held at the private home of Miss Wolff at South Audley Street, London. There...
Education Vita Sackville-West
At thirteen VSW began attending a small day school run by Helen Wolff (whose name is variously spelled in various sources) in South Audley Street, off Park Lane. The staff were mostly male. Vita...
Family and Intimate relationships Violet Trefusis
Later, while Violet was with Pat at Bordighera in Italy in March 1920 (almost immediately after the failed elopement with Vita), Denys was at Monte Carlo with Nancy Cunard .
Trefusis, Violet. “Introduction”. Violet to Vita, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska, Methuen, 1989, pp. 1 - 52.
38
Jullian, Philippe, John Nova Phillips, Violet Trefusis, and Vita Sackville-West. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton, 1976.
54
Souhami, Diana. Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Flamingo, 1997.
212
Family and Intimate relationships Wyndham Lewis
WL 's problematic views on women surface in his writing and his life. He had numerous affairs with women (including writer Nancy Cunard ), and these liaisons produced several illegitimate children, all of whom he...
Friends, Associates Samuel Beckett
Among SB 's various friendships made in Paris, that with James Joyce was the most formative. He was lucky not to lose his friendship with Nancy Cunard when she tried to pin him down over...
Friends, Associates Cecily Mackworth
Working with the Free French, CM got to know as a colleague André Dewavrin (code-named Colonel Passy , in a system of using as noms de guerre the names of Paris Metro stations), who directed...
Friends, Associates Gertrude Stein
It was John Lane and Roger Fry who introduced them to the Bloomsbury circle. The trip did not result in a publishing contract, as GS had hoped, but it did advance her reputation. The next...
Friends, Associates Cecily Mackworth
Her literary circle in Paris was highly eclectic: the many camps in which she had friends included the Surrealist rump, the incoming Existentialists, and the Communists (who were mostly ex-Surrealists).
Mackworth, Cecily. Ends of the World. Carcanet, 1987.
60-1
Tristan Tzara became a...
Friends, Associates Iris Tree
Among IT 's close friends were poet, publisher, journalist, and political activist Nancy Cunard , artist and diarist Dora Carrington , socialite Sybil Hart-Davis , and socialite, actress, and memoirist Lady Diana Cooper .
Fielding, Daphne. The Rainbow Picnic. Eyre Methuen, 1974.
53
Friends, Associates Lilian Bowes Lyon
Her friends included writers Laurens van der Post and William Plomer (who was also a reader for her publisher, Jonathan Cape ). They also included her housekeeper, Ellen Beckwith (with whom she put herself on...
Friends, Associates Nina Hamnett
She took up old friendships, making visits out of wartime London to Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska in Gloucestershire and Roger Fry at Guildford (where Lady Strachey led the party in evening literary games). She breakfasted regularly with...
Friends, Associates Una Marson
While working for Selassie , UM met the writer and racial activist Nancy Cunard , who was in Geneva as a reporter for the American Associated Negro Press . Later her BBC work enabled her...

Timeline

1787
The world's leading iron works opened at the coal-mining centre of Blaenavon in South Wales; it had the longest extant tunnel and connected to the most extensive canal system.
1840
The British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company (later the Cunard Steamship Company ) began its regular transatlantic steamer service.
1856
The Cunard Company 's iron steamship the Persia crossed the Atlantic at an average speed of 13.49 knots, establishing itself as the fastest vessel in the world.
1 January 1916
The British edition of Vogue (an American fashion magazine) began publishing from Condé Nast in Hanover Square, London.
April 1931
Nine black youths were tried in Scottsboro, Alabama, for allegedly raping two white women three weeks before; the death sentences passed on them were overturned by the US Supreme Court the following year.
18 July 1936
The Spanish Civil War began between the Republicans (including Communists) and the Fascists led by Francisco Franco .
September 1966
Cecil Woolf and John Bagguley presented a questionnaire to writers on the model of Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War, by Nancy Cunard and others (November 1937). They published the results in Authors...