Nancy Cunard was an important and notoriously bohemian figure in avant-garde literary, artistic, and political circles from 1916 on and throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Between 1928 and 1931 she operated the Hours Press in La Chapelle-Réanville, France, publishing some significant modernist works. She was well known for her passionate interests in, and commitment to, African and African American culture and for her opposition to fascism. She created a monumental celebration of black achievement in Negro Anthology, Made by Nancy Cunard, 1931-1933 (1934). Her poetry, influenced by Georgian and emerging modernist traditions, was widely known in the interwar period and was initially well received, but it has been largely neglected until recently. Her prose and her personality are more often discussed than her poetry.

Clara Nancy Cunard was born at Nevill Holt, a country house in Leicestershire, on 10 March 1896. Her father, Sir Bache Cunard, was a grandson of Samuel Cunard...