Magnificent Rebel, Anne de Courcy
Magnificent Rebel, Anne de Courcy
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Magnificent Rebel
Nancy Cunard in Jazz Age Paris

Author: Anne de Courcy

Narrator: Rosy Armitage

Unabridged: 13 hr 37 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/11/2023


Synopsis

"Rosy Armitage's British accent helps create a fairy-tale atmosphere around socialite Nancy Cunard as this biography begins."- AudioFile Magazine

Anne de Courcy, the author of Husband Hunters and Chanel's Riviera, examines the controversial life of legendary beauty, writer and rich girl Nancy Cunard during her thirteen years in Jazz-Age Paris.

Paris in the 1920s was bursting with talent in the worlds of art, design and literature. The city was at the forefront of everything new and exciting; there was no censorship; life and love were there for the taking. At its center was the gorgeous, seductive English socialite Nancy Cunard, scion of the famous shipping line. Her lovers were legion, but this book focuses on five of the most significant and a lifelong friendship.

Her affairs with acclaimed writers Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, Michael Arlen and Louis Aragon were passionate and tempestuous, as was her romance with black jazz pianist Henry Crowder. Her friendship with the famous Irish novelist George Moore, her mother’s lover and a man falsely rumored to be Nancy’s father, was the longest-lasting of her life. Cunard’s early years were ones of great wealth but also emotional deprivation. Her mother Lady Cunard, the American heiress Maud Alice Burke (who later changed her name to Emerald) became a reigning London hostess; Nancy, from an early age, was given to promiscuity and heavy drinking and preferred a life in the arts to one in the social sphere into which she had been born. Highly intelligent, a gifted poet and widely read, she founded a small press that published Samuel Beckett among others. A muse to many, she was also a courageous crusader against racism and fascism. She left Paris in 1933, at the end of its most glittering years and remained unafraid to live life on the edge until her death in 1965.

Magnificent Rebel is a nuanced portrait of a complex woman, set against the backdrop of the City of Light during one of its most important and fascinating decades.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

About Anne de Courcy

Anne de Courcy is the author of several widely acclaimed works of social history and biography, including CHANEL'S RIVIERA, THE HUSBAND HUNTERS, MARGOT AT WAR, THE FISHING FLEET, THE VICEROY'S DAUGHTERS and DEBS AT WAR. She lives in London and Gloucestershire.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Martie on January 03, 2023

Genre: Biography Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub Date: April 11, 2023 Anne de Courcy wrote a fascinating and well-documented biography of Nancy Cunard, who dominated the Paris scene in the 1920s, hanging around with all those famous people you read about in Paula McLain’s biographical fiction “The P......more

Goodreads review by Elaine on March 26, 2023

Nancy Cunard, the scion of the famous Cunard Shipping Line, was brilliant, beautiful, and wealthy. Her early years were filled with everything money could buy, but she lacked the love and companionship of her parents, who had their own lives to live in the upper levels of society. This tragic neglec......more

Goodreads review by AL on April 10, 2023

Nancy Cunard is someone I have never heard of and I am so thankful to have come upon this memoir to meet such a vivacious character. She was quite an incredible woman, well ahead of her time. Standing up for women’s rights and that of black men and women who she freely spent time with without hesita......more

Goodreads review by Dan on March 08, 2023

My thanks to both NetGallley and the publisher St.Martin's Press for an advanced copy of a woman who knew the best, the brightest and most talented artists of the jazz age, influenced quite a few both good and bad, and lived life in the best of all possible ways. Paris after the first World War must......more

Goodreads review by Marcia on May 15, 2023

I received an advanced digital reader’s copy of Magnificent Rebel: Nancy Cunard in Jazz Age Paris by Anne de Courcy in exchange for my unbiased opinion. I’d like to thank Ms. de Courcy, her publisher St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for providing me this opportunity. Ms. de Courcy’s forte’ is to de......more


Quotes

Praise for Magnificent Rebel:

“Luminous…A seductive portrait of life lived to the fullest.” –Publishers Weekly

“A fulsome portrait of a quixotic, disruptive, talented woman.” –Kirkus

“This bed-hopping biography by de Courcy does an excellent job conveying the reckless, decadent Jazz Age in Paris” –Library Journal

“Anne de Courcy deploys all her considerable skills....an always entertaining account of [Nancy Cunard’s] most glamorous years, and the Parisian world in which she shone.” –Times Literary Supplement (UK)

Praise for Chanel's Riviera:

"Intoxicating descriptions...of Chanel's life, specifically her fashion innovations and love affairs, are woven throughout the book." —New York Times Book Review

“A history of the Cote d’Azur, from the frivolity and decadence of its post-Jazz Age heyday to the terror and desperation of World War II.” Wall Street Journal

“Entertaining…a peek, at once envious and satisfyingly censorious, at the lifestyles of the rich and famous.” The Washington Post

Praise for The Husband Hunters:

“[The American heiresses] were just what was needed to shake the cocktail and bring some pizazz to the party. De Courcy conjures it all with skill.” —New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice

“Anglophiles fascinated by the intricate tribal codes of the British upper classes will find plenty to feed their interest.” —Boston Globe

“A true account of the women who inspired Downton Abbey.”—Vanity Fair

"Witty and well researched."—Daisy Goodwin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fortune Hunter