Women of the Left Bank [Paperback]

Shari Benstock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1987

This is an exploration of the lives and works of some two dozen American, English, and French women whose talent shaped the Paris expatriate experience in the early twentieth century.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"The question that predicates this inquiry is not 'What was it like to be part of literary Paris,'" writes Shari Benstock, but "'What was it like to be a woman in literary Paris?'" That city's Left Bank, says the author, was in the early part of the 20th century "inhabited by all those on the margin of culture, a place for the dislocated, even the dispossessed." Among these expatriates were women writers, editors, poets, journalists, and novelists who came to Paris from America or England, often to escape a family or society that made it hard for them to live as a lesbian or a black woman--or simply as an intelligent, ambitious person uninterested in settling into traditional domestic life.

If you believe the usual literary histories, the early 20th-century modernist movement in English literature was, Gertrude Stein excepted, a movement of men. Benstock restores the roles of such remarkable women as Djuna Barnes, Jean Rhys, Sylvia Beach, and Janet Flanner in the history of the time, revealing what she calls the "underside of the cultural canvas." The book is thorough and wonderfully descriptive, offering both a literary history and a portrait of the lives of creative women. --Maria Dolan --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The expatriate experience for American literati in Paris in the earlier part of this century is usually associated with male writers such as Hemingway, Joyce and Pound. In a reassessment of the period and the prevailing one-sided view of it, Benstock, editor of the journal Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, presents the women who left their enduring mark on the cultural milieu of a nation. Through their writings, including unpublished and newly available documentary sources of the period, Djuna Barnes, Nancy Cunard, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton and others are revealed as significant in the development of modernism, imagism and other avant-garde movements in which they were overshadowed or ignored by their male counterparts. Not only were their experiences different from those of their male counterparts, but they were also distinct from each other. Benstock tracks the sexually liberated lifestyles and the creative originality of these women with a wealth of documentation.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 566 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; 1st Pbk. Ed., 1987 edition (1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292790406
• ISBN-13: 978-0292790407
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 5.8 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Edifying & entertaining., May 13, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Women of the Left Bank (Paperback)

I picked up this book out of interest in expatriate Americans in the early part of the 20th century. I was immediately drawn into the worlds of these writers and artists and ultimately learned about incredible characters like Sylvia Beach, who was the first person to publish James Joyce's Ulysses, and Margaret Anderson, publisher of the modernist The Little Review.

As a feminist scholar, Benstock analyzes the places these women occupied in the Paris scene as well as in a world in transition. She admirably examines the literary works of the writers, but the book never feels solely like a book of criticism. Biographical information abounds and gives each chapter something of a story arc.

For readers who enjoy biographies of literary personalities but often miss the lack of detailed discussion of a writer's works, this book will not disappoint. And if you are at all interested Paris in the early part of the last century, modernism, or any of the many women discussed in the book (Edith Wharton, Djuna Barnes, Gertrude Stein & Alice Toklas, HD, Mina Loy, etc.) this book will be an invaluable source of information.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Staggering good..., June 3, 2004

By 

S. A Troutt (MURFREESBORO, TN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Women of the Left Bank (Paperback)

Not really a biography, tho it is very biographic. Not really a study of Feminism, tho most of the women were early pioneers. Not really a study of Lesbians, tho most of the women were, at least, bisexual. What this book does, and it does it extremely well, is illustrate how these women struggled to 'define' themselves, as artists, as authors, as sexual beings, as individuals at a time when women were generally perceived as little better then simple minded children factories. From Gertrude Stein to Djuna Barnes to Natalie Barney (Rene Vivian...'a life spent looking for death')such different people but sharing a common thread of struggle (and cost). I've read a lot about this period and these women, and no book has given me a better understanding of them and emotional empathy with them, then this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best overview of the period and the personalities., February 9, 2009

By 

Kimberley Ballantyne "Night owl" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Women of the Left Bank (Paperback)

This is a great book on the women who made huge contributions to that legendary period of culture: Left Bank Paris between the wars. Impeccably researched and beautifully written, it reveals, through multiple layers of history, biography and social commentary, the enormous and subtle influence of an extraordinary group of talented women whose remarkable gifts and achievements were usually overshadowed and often at the service of the male figures of the left bank scene. A completely absorbing book, I couldn't put it down from the moment I started reading it. One of those books you want to share with everyone, (and everyone I have shared it with shares my enthusiasm for it). An absolute favourite; I can't recommend it highly enough.