Chapter 7 Publishing the Avant-Garde: Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press
Resource type
Book chapter
Creator (person)
Aguirre, Mercedes
Date published
2019
Abstract
Nancy Cunard’s Hours Press was one of the most successful expatriate small presses operating in France during the interwar period. Cunard founded the Hours Press in 1928 at her house in Réanville, Normandy, later moving to Paris in 1929. In its four-year run, it published twenty-four works by some of the most notable names associated with modernism, including Ezra Pound’s A Draft of XXX Cantos and Samuel Beckett’s first published book, Whoroscope, in addition to works by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, Louis Aragon, George Moore, Richard Aldington, Bob Brown and Brian Howard, among others. The books published by the Hours Press were also innovative in their design, and Cunard commissioned artists associated with surrealism and other avant-garde movements, including Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, John Banting and Len Lye, to create illustrations for the covers.
This chapter looks at the history of the Hours Press and its publications in the context of the group of small presses founded by expatriate writers in France during the interwar period.
Book title
Publishing Modernist Fiction and Poetry
Editor
Jaillant, Lise
Pagination
135-153
Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
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