Nancy Cunard

-
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 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
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
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 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...
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...
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...
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
Friends, Associates H. D.
In the 1920s, while HD and Bryher were living rootlessly, sometimes in London, sometimes in Europe, HD's list of acquaintances grew to include Gertrude Stein , Alice B. Toklas , Ernest Hemingway , James Joyce
Friends, Associates Dorothy Richardson
The Montparnasse group with whom they visited included Ernest and Hadley Hemingway , Sylvia Beach , Mary Butts , Nancy Cunard , Cecil Maitland , Mina Loy , and Nina Hamnett . Richardson was disappointed...
Friends, Associates Sylvia Townsend Warner
Among the many literary figures personally known to STW were Theodore Francis Powys and his wife Violet (the friends who introduced her to the poet Valentine Ackland ) and novelist Nancy Cunard .
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. “Introduction”. Letters: Sylvia Townsend Warner, edited by William Maxwell, Chatto and Windus, 1982, p. vii - xvii.
xiii-xiv
Warner, Sylvia Townsend, and David Garnett. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Sylvia and David: The Townsend Warner / Garnett Letters, edited by Richard Garnett, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. various pages.
2
Friends, Associates Aldous Huxley
Those friends of Aldous whom his wife Maria referred to as the brilliant ones,
Bedford, Sybille. Aldous Huxley. Knopf; Harper & Row, 1974.
105
and found intimidatingly intellectual, included T. S. Eliot , Osbert , Edith , and Sacheverell Sitwell , various members...
Friends, Associates Anna Kavan
After her relationship with Stuart Edmonds ended, AK developed a large and close circle of friends who doted on her. Her friends were almost exclusively homosexual men, and she developed a reputation for not getting...
Friends, Associates Anna Wickham
AW frequented popular Bohemian hangouts such as the Café Royal and, later, the Fitzroy Tavern.
Wickham, Anna. “Introduction”. Selected Poems, edited by David Garnett, Chatto and Windus, 1971, pp. 7 - 11.
9-10
Hepburn, James, Anna Wickham, and James Hepburn. “Anna Wickham: A Memoir”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, 1984, pp. 1 - 48.
26
According to her friend David Garnett , she preferred the hard-up to the well-off, the doomed and...
Friends, Associates Enid Bagnold
Her biographer says that at Shooters Hill EBturned . . . from [her] artistic friends to society friends.
Sebba, Anne. Enid Bagnold: The Authorized Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986.
46
In fact, however, the upper-class society to which she now made approaches through a new...
Friends, Associates Edith Sitwell
Beginning her editorship of Wheels, ES made other friendships, including those with Nancy Cunard , Nina Hamnett (whom she describes as generous and courageous), Walter Sickert (whose generosity and sense of fun she celebrates),...

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...