Adrienne Monnier

Adrienne Monnier (born April 26, 1892 in Paris ; † June 19, 1955 there ) was a bookseller and publisher who played a central role in the Parisian literary scene between the First and Second World Wars .

Life

Adrienne Monnier initially worked as a teacher. In 1915, she and her friend Suzanne Bonnierre opened a French bookstore called "La Maison des Amis des Livres" on Rue de l'Odéon in Paris. Adrienne Monnier was one of the first booksellers in France. She organized readings in the “Maison” with contemporary French writers such as André Gide , Paul Valéry and Jules Romains , thus helping to make them known to a wider circle of people interested in literature. Also Colette , André Breton , Paul Claudel and Rainer Maria Rilke frequented the bookstore.

With Monnier's help, Sylvia Beach was able to found the first English-language lending library and bookstore in Paris, Shakespeare and Company , in November 1919 , initially at 8 rue Dupuytren. This bookstore quickly became a meeting place, especially for Americans . In 1921 the shop moved to 12 Rue de l'Odéon, opposite Monnier's bookstore, on the left bank of the Seine .

Monnier and Beach were known to many greats of the Parisian literary and art scene, including DH Lawrence , Ernest Hemingway , Ezra Pound , TS Eliot , Valéry Larbaud , Thornton Wilder , André Gide , Léon-Paul Fargue , George Antheil , Robert McAlmon , Gertrude Stein , Stephen Benet , Aleister Crowley , John Quinn , Berenice Abbott , Gisèle Freund and Man Ray . As a bookseller, she and Sylvia Beach were at the center of this intellectual circle, which Monnier liked to call "Odéonia".

In June 1925 Adrienne Monnier first published a French literary magazine La navire d'argent . Adrienne published - in addition to a large number of French writers - also a translation of TS Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock , Eliot's first longer poem to be published in French. Monnier's magazine published lists of American works that were available in translation, and dedicated an issue to American writers William Carlos Williams , Ernest Hemingway, and ee cummings . Jean Prévost published his first work, L'Aviateur , in the Navire d'argent . The magazine saw twelve issues.

From January 1938 to May 1945 Monnier published the Gazette des amis des livres (10 issues in 9 deliveries).

Adrienne Monnier died of suicide in 1955 .

Her sister Marie Monnier was married to the French painter and book illustrator Paul-Émile Bécat (1885-1960), who portrayed both Adrienne Monnier and Sylvia Beach.

Works

Seals

• La figure. 1923.
• Les Vertus. 1926.
• Les poésies d'Adrienne Monnier. Collected seals. 1962.

Other fonts

• Les gazettes d'Adrienne Monnier. 1953.
• Souvenir de Londres. 1957.
• Trois agendas d'Adrienne Monnier. 1960.
• Lettres des deserts. 1962.
• Correspondance Adrienne Monnier & Henri Michaux. 1939-1955. La Hune, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-87878-282-8 .

Translation expenses

• Notes from the rue de l'Odéon. Writings 1917–1953. Insel, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1995, ISBN 3-458-16692-0 .
• The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier. Translated and edited. by Richard McDougall. Scribner, New York 1976. New edition: Bison Books, The University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NB 1996 (excerpts from Les gazettes d'Adrienne Monnier , Dernières gazettes et écrits divers , Rue de l'Odéon and Trois agendas d'Adrienne Monnier )

literature

• Sylvia Beach: Shakespeare and Company. A bookstore in Paris. 6th edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-518-37323-4 .
• Valéry Larbaud: Lettres à Adrienne Monnier et à Sylvia Beach. 1919-1933. Inst. Mémoires de l'Ed. Contemporaine, Paris 1991.
• Laure Murat: Passage de l'Odéon: Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier et la vie littéraire à Paris dans l'entre-deux-guerres. Fayard, Paris 2003.
• Andrea Weiss: Paris was a woman. The women from the Left Bank. Djuna Barnes, Janet Flanner , Gertrude Stein & Co. reissued. Rowohlt, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 978-3-499-24224-3 .

Web links

• About booksellers in Paris in the 1920s ( Memento of April 28, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) (Microsoft Word document)