Cunard, Nancy, 1896-1965 (writer)
Dates
- Existence: 1896 - 1965
Biography
Nancy Cunard was a British writer and political activist. She was born in London in 1896 to Sir Bache Cunard 3rd Baronet, and Maud Alice Burke, an American society hostess. She was brought up on the family estate in Leicestershire and then in London when her parents separated in 1911.
In 1920 Cunard moved to Paris, where she frequented artists and writers from the Modernist, Dada and Surrealist movements. This is also when she produced much of her published poetry, as well as the only piece of fiction she’s known to have written, a short story entitled ‘A Lost Night’, possibly inspired by her relationship with the writer Michael Arlen. Throughout her life, she was a muse to many prominent 20th-century artists and writers, such as Aldous Huxley, Wyndham Lewis, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon, as well as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, and others. Many were her one-time lovers.
Nancy Cunard also used her influence and wealth as a shipping heiress to support anti-fascist and anti-racist causes. In 1934 she produced a black internationalist anthology entitled Negro, which comprised contributions from black nationalists, French surrealists, and modernist writers amongst others.
After the Second World War – during which she had worked as a translator for the French Résistance – she travelled extensively around the world. She died in Paris in 1965, weakened by years of poverty, mental illness, and poor physical health.