Cunard, Nancy, 1896-1965

Nancy Clare Cunard (March 10, 1896 - March 17, 1965) was an English writer, editor, publisher, political activist, anarchist and poet. 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 Brancusi, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. She died penniless at age 69. During World War II, Cunard worked, to the point of physical exhaustion, as a translator in London on behalf of the French Resistance. After the war, she gave up her home at Réanville and traveled extensively. She suffered from mental illness and poor physical health, worsened by alcoholism, poverty, and self-destructive behavior. She was committed to a mental hospital after a fight with London police; but, after her release, her health declined even further, and she weighed only sixty pounds when she was found on the street in Paris and brought to the Hôpital Cochin, where she died two days later. Her body was returned to England for cremation and the remains were sent back to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris. Her ashes rest in urn number 9016.

English poet, publisher, journalist, and political activist.

Daughter of Sir Bache Cunard, of the Cunard shipping family.

Nancy Clare Cunard (March 10, 1896 - March 17, 1965) was an English writer, editor, publisher, political activist, anarchist and poet. 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 Brancusi, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. She died penniless at age 69. During World War II, Cunard worked, to the point of physical exhaustion, as a translator in London on behalf of the French Resistance. After the war, she gave up her home at Réanville and traveled extensively. She suffered from mental illness and poor physical health, worsened by alcoholism, poverty, and self-destructive behavior. She was committed to a mental hospital after a fight with London police; but, after her release, her health declined even further, and she weighed only sixty pounds when she was found on the street in Paris and brought to the Hôpital Cochin, where she died two days later. Her body was returned to England for cremation and the remains were sent back to the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her ashes rest in urn number 9016.

Nancy Cunard, British heiress, poet and author.

Born in 1896, Nancy Clara Cunard was the only child of the middle aged English baronet Sir Bache Cunard and his young American wife Maud Alice Burke. Though raised largely by servants and governesses, Nancy was not excluded when her mother, filling her role as a society hostess, filled the house with the most prominent writers, artists, musicians, and politicians of the day. A special friend of her mother, George Moore, took a particular interest in Nancy, encouraging her education and interest in literature and poetry.

When Nancy was fourteen, her mother left Sir Bache, and taking Nancy, established a separate residence in London. Nancy attended private schools in London, Germany, and Paris, where she became friends with Iris Tree, Dianna Manners, Osbert Sitwell, Augustus John, and Ezra Pound. In 1914, referring to themselves as the Corrupt Coterie, the group spent evenings in Parisian cafes discussing politics and poetry rather than attending to the coventional social milieu. About this time Nancy also began writing poetry, and though not an exceptional poet, published several poems in 1915 and 1916.

In 1916, Nancy had returned to London from school and became engaged to Sydney Fairbairn, much to the surprise of her family and friends. Fairbairn, while a socially acceptable young man, was very conventional, especially when compared to Nancy's usual choice of companions. The marriage ended in a formal separation after about 20 months, though the divorce was not final until 1925.

In 1920 Cunard moved to Paris where she became associated with the Dada and Modernist movements, and though she never formally joined, the Communist party. It is generally agreed that at this point in her life Cunard developed a strong dependence on alcohol and she may have experimented with other drugs. She also published her first volumes of poetry, starting with Outlaws in 1921, followed by Sublunary (1923), and Parallax (1925).

1927 found Cunard moving into an old farmhouse in Reanville, outside Paris, and setting up the Hours Press. Here she printed works by new and established writers, including Ezra Pound, Norman Douglas, Laura Riding, and Samuel Beckett. In 1928 Cunard met and became involved with Henry Crowder, a black American jazz musician playing with a band in a local night club. Through Crowder, Cunard became aware of the American civil rights movement. Over the next several years Cunard worked on a volume which was meant to create a record of the history of blacks in America. She solicited contributions for the volume from black and white artists in America and Europe and in 1934 to moderate fanfare and some controversy, Negro was published at her own expense.

Cunard took a strong interest in other civil rights issues for the rest of her life. She was a free-lance correspondent in Spain during the Spanish Civil War and then agitated for better treatment for the Spanish refugees in France after Franco's forces had prevailed. She traveled widely in South America, the Caribbean, and Tunisia, writing about the effects of colonialism as she went, and she frequently raised the issue of the color bar in her home country of England.

After World War II, Cunard traveled extensively and almost constantly. Her farmhouse in Reanville had been looted and vandalized during the Occupation and, because much of the damage had been done by locals, she did not feel able to return. She wrote memoirs of Norman Douglas and George Moore which were well received, and visited her friends. Deteriorating health, both physical and mental, caused her to alienate even her oldest and closest friends so that she died alone in a Parisian charity hospital in 1965.

Nancy Clare Cunard (March 10, 1896 - March 17, 1965) was an English writer, editor, publisher, political activist, anarchist and poet. 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 Brancusi, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. She died penniless at age 69.

During World War II, Cunard worked, to the point of physical exhaustion, as a translator in London on behalf of the French Resistance. After the war, she gave up her home at Réanville and traveled extensively. She suffered from mental illness and poor physical health, worsened by alcoholism, poverty, and self-destructive behavior. She was committed to a mental hospital after a fight with London police; but, after her release, her health declined even further, and she weighed only sixty pounds when she was found on the street in Paris and brought to the Hôpital Cochin, where she died two days later. Her body was returned to England for cremation and the remains were sent back to the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris. Her ashes rest in urn number 9016.

Nancy Cunard was born on 10 March 1896 in Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, England, daughter of Sir Bache Cunard and Lady Maud Alice Burke Cunard. She spent her childhood as part of the British upper class on the family estate, surrounded by her parents' literary and artistic friends. When Cunard was fourteen, she moved with her mother to London, and subsequently attended schools in London, Paris and Germany.

Cunard began writing and publishing poetry in the 1910's, and after World War I she settled in Paris, where she became involved in the Dada, Surrealist and Modernist movements. Her first volume of poetry, Outlaws, was published in 1921, followed in 1923 by Sublunary and Parallax in 1925.

In 1927 Cunard founded the Hours Press in an old farmhouse in La Chapelle-Réanville, Normandy. The Press specialized in publishing writers whose works had difficulty finding a home elsewhere, including Ezra Pound and Samuel Beckett. The Hours Press closed after four years, after which Cunard became intensely involved in the black civil rights movement in the United States. Driven by her interest in the struggle, she spent several years collecting writings by and about African-Americans, which were published in 1934 in the anthology Negro .

For most of 1936-1939 Cunard lived in Madrid with the poet Pablo Neruda, working as a freelance writer during the Spanish Civil War. She spent most of World War II in London, where she published the anthology Poems for France (1944). After the war, Cunard returned to France to find that the Germans had destroyed or stolen most of her possessions.

Cunard's later publications included Grand Man: Memories of Norman Douglas (1954), GM: Memories of George Moore (1956) and These Were the Hours (1965), a posthumously published memoir. She died in Paris in 1965.