No Modernism Without Lesbians

A Sunday Times Book of the Year
Winner of the Polari Prize
'A book about love, identity, acceptance and the freedom to write, paint, compose and wear corduroy breeches with gaiters. To swear, kiss, publish and be damned. It is vastly entertaining and often moving... There isn't a page without an entertaining vignette' The Times.

The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place - Paris, Between the Wars - fostered the birth of the Modernist movement.

Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher; a patron of artists; a society hostess; a groundbreaking writer.

They were all women who loved women. They rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own - forming a community around them in Paris.

Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris.

'One of the best books I've read this year.' James Bridle

Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 05/01/2021
Pages: 464
Weight: 0.9lbs
Size: 7.75h x 5.05w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9781786694874


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2021
Publishers Weekly 04/19/2021 pg. 1

About the Author

Diana Souhami was brought up in London and studied philosophy at Hull University. She has published biographies of Gluck, Gertrude Stein, Alice Keppel, Radclyffe Hall, Romaine Brooks and Edith Cavell. Her biography of Alexander Selkirk, Selkirk's Island, won the Whitbread Biography Award.
Diana Souhami was brought up in London and studied philosophy at Hull University. She has published biographies of Gluck, Gertrude Stein, Alice Keppel, Radclyffe Hall, Romaine Brooks and Edith Cavell. Her biography of Alexander Selkirk, Selkirk's Island, won the Whitbread Biography Award.