Selected Poems (ePub)

Nancy ¿Cunard was a poet, publisher, journalist and political activist. Born on 10 March 1896 in Nevill Holt, Leicestershire, Nancy was the great-granddaughter of shipping magnate Sir Samuel Cunard and the only child of Sir Bache and Lady Maud (Emerald) Cunard. Raised amid wealth and privilege, she began writing poetry during World War i and later authored two poetry collections, Outlaws (1921) and Sublunary (1923), as well as numerous chapbooks. As founder and editor of the Hours Press in La Chapelle-Réanville, France, Cunard was responsible for the appearance of major works by Modern writers including Samuel Beckett, Ezra Pound, and George Moore. In the 1930s she embarked on a life-long advocacy of political and social movements. During the Spanish Civil War and World War ii, Cunard enlisted in the moral cause against Fascism and anti-imperialism, producing pamphlets in support of resistance movements and writing eye-witness reports for newspapers in the UK and the US. Following a relationship with the African American Jazz musician Henry Crowder, Cunard was essentially disinherited by her mother and spent the final decades of her life tirelessly advocating for her two great passions, poetry and social justice. Following a period of physical and mental breakdown, on 16 March 1965 she died alone in an open ward of the Hôpital Cochin, Paris.