Literary Women of the Left Bank, Paris, 1900-1940's

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Jean Segaloff, 2016. Limited edition livre d'artiste celebrating modernist women writers and publishers in Paris, signed by artist Jean Segaloff. The book contains hand-colored etchings of twelve important literary women, most of them queer: Nancy Cunard, Djuna Barnes, Sylvia Beach, Adrienne Monnier, Janet Flanner, Margaret Anderson, Jane Heap, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Bryer [sic] (Annie Winifred Ellerman, pen name Bryher), Gertrude Stein, Colette, and Kay Boyle. Each portrait is paired with a vellum overlay printed with a quotation by or about the subject. The sheet that reads "I opened a little book shop on the rue de Odeon called Shakespeare and Company" lifts to reveal bookseller Sylvia Beach, publisher of James Joyce's Ulysses, while the overlay to writer Djuna Barnes quotes a line from her most famous novel, Nightwood: "I talk too much because I have been made miserable by what you are keeping hushed." Segaloff notes: "The literary women of the Left Bank of Paris from 1900-1940 were a diverse group. . . . I wanted to portray each woman as a complex, intellectual being rather than a one-dimensional character." Segaloff created these etchings on polyester plates to achieve soft, richly inked lines, adding watercolor "to give the portraits warmth and character." This copy is number "1" of the second edition of Literary Women of the Left Bank, an edition that likely ran to fewer than five copies, following the 2014 first edition of three copies. OCLC locates one institutional holding, a first edition at Yale. A fine example of a moving livre d'artiste. Oblong volume, measuring 7 x 11.5 inches: [28]. Original rivet-bound, burnt orange cloth boards, green and gold paper pastedown labels, silk endpapers. Twelve hand-colored drypoint portraits with printed vellum overleaves.