Caresse Crosby and the Black Sun Press Publish Modernist Poetry in Paris
Poets involved
What happened
Caresse Crosby (née Mary Phelps Jacob, inventor of the brassière) and her husband Harry Crosby founded and ran the Black Sun Press in Paris, operating from the rue Cardinale in the Left Bank's literary quarter. The press published first or early editions of work by Hart Crane, D.H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound among others, becoming one of the most significant small presses of the modernist era. Caresse's role as publisher, patron, and cultural impresario made her an indispensable figure in the Paris expatriate literary scene.
Literary impact
The convergence of Caresse Crosby's twin careers as brassière inventor and modernist literary publisher creates a unique symbolic thread connecting women's bodily liberation to the liberation of verse from Victorian constraints. Her press gave Hart Crane's The Bridge its first fine edition, and her patronage supported some of the most formally innovative poetry of the century. Her story has been taken up by feminist literary historians as evidence of women's foundational role in modernism.
Source: Wikipedia
