Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940A “valuable and intriguing” study of the lives and works of literary women who shaped expatriate Paris (NPR). Focusing on some two dozen American, English, and French women whose talent shaped the Paris expatriate experience in the early twentieth century, from Anais Nin to Alice B. Toklas and beyond, this book shines new light on how gender was experienced and expressed during an important moment in modern literary history. "Shari Benstock . . . weaves together, with great skill, the histories of an extraordinary group of talented women—publishers like Sylvia Beach, Caresse Crosby, Margaret Anderson, and Jane Heap, novelists Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, and Edith Wharton. She examines in some depth the writing produced by poets, journalists and novelists, thus combining literary criticism and social history in a seamless running narrative.” —NPR “Through their writings, including unpublished and newly available documentary sources of the period, Djuna Barnes, Nancy Cunard, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton and others are revealed as significant in the development of modernism, imagism and other avant-garde movements in which they were overshadowed or ignored by their male counterparts. . . . Benstock tracks the sexually liberated lifestyles and the creative originality of these women with a wealth of documentation.” —Publishers Weekly “An inspiration, setting a standard for literary history and feminist criticism that will be difficult to surpass.” —American Literature |
Contents
| 3 | |
Secret Passages The Faubourg St Germain | 37 |
Simultaneous Existences Four Lives in St Germain | 71 |
From the Left Bank to the Upper East Side Janet Flanners Letter from Paris | 99 |
Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas Rue de Fleurus | 143 |
Sylvia Beach and Adrienne Monnier Rue de lOdéon | 194 |
Djuna Barnes Rue StRomain | 230 |
Natalie Barney Rue Jacob | 268 |
H D and Bryher En passant | 311 |
At the Sign of the Printing Press The Role of Small Presses and Little Magazines | 357 |
Paris Transfer The 1930s | 396 |
The City They Left | 442 |
Notes | 455 |
Works Cited and Consulted | 479 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adrienne Monnier aesthetic Aldington Alice Toklas American artistic Auden Barney's bookshop Bryher century Colette Colette's critical culture death defined discovered Djuna Barnes dress early edited Edith Wharton effects effort English expatriate experience Ezra Pound Faubourg Fayne female feminine feminist fiction forms France French friends friendship Gertrude Stein Helen Hermione heterosexual homosexual Imagist intellectual interest Jane Heap Janet Flanner Jolas journal Joyce Joyce's Ladies Almanack language later Left Bank lesbian literary literature Little Review living London lover male marriage masculine McAlmon memoirs ment Mina Loy Modernism Modernist mother Nancy Cunard Natalie Barney never Nightwood Nora novel Paris patriarchal poem poet poetic poetry political portrait Proust published reading relationship Rhys role rue de Fleurus salon Sappho seems served Shakespeare and Company social society suggests Sylvia Beach tion Toklas Ulysses Virginia Woolf woman word writing wrote York