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Obelisk Press
Obelisk Press was an English-language press based in Paris, founded by British publisher Jack Kahane in 1929. Manchester-born novelist Kahane began the Obelisk Press after his publisher, Grant Richards, went bankrupt. Going into partnership with a printer — Herbert Clarke, owner of Imprimerie Vendôme — Kahane, as "Cecil Barr", published his next novel ''Daffodil'' under his own imprint in 1931. A writer and publisher of "db's" ("dirty books"), Kahane mixed serious work with smut in his list; he has been described as "a quite bizarre blend of ultra-sophisticated, avant-garde literary entrepreneur and, by the standards of his time, pornographer." He was able to take advantage of the fact that books published in France in English were not subject to the kind of censorship practised in Britain at the time. However, they were still subject to confiscation by British and US customs officers. Kahane published Henry Miller's 1934 novel, ''Tropic of Cancer'', which had explicit sexua ...
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English-language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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Harold Buckley
Captain Harold Robert Buckley (4 April 1896 – 13 June 1958) was a World War I flying ace credited with five aerial victories. World War I service Buckley was one of the American pilots who came to aviation via an ambulance service. Once in France, he joined the U.S. Army Air Service in Paris. He found himself assigned to the 95th Aero Squadron in March 1918. Between 30 May and 27 September 1918, he downed four enemy airplanes and an observation balloon. Post World War I When the war ended, Buckley stayed in Paris. He wrote an unofficial history of the 95th Aero called ''Squadron 95'' in 1933; fellow squadron member Lansing Holden illustrated it. The book has been in publication as recently as 1972. Honors and awards Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) The Distinguished Service Cross is presented to Harold Robert Buckley, First Lieutenant (Air Service), U.S. Army, for extraordinary heroism in action near Perle, France, August 10, 1918. Lieutenant Buckley was on a patrol protect ...
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George Bataille
Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, and poetry, explored such subjects as eroticism, mysticism, surrealism, and transgression. His work would prove influential on subsequent schools of philosophy and social theory, including poststructuralism. Early life Georges Bataille was the son of Joseph-Aristide Bataille (b. 1851), a tax collector (later to go blind and be paralysed by neurosyphilis), and Antoinette-Aglaë Tournarde (b. 1865). Born on 10 September 1897 in Billom in the region of Auvergne, his family moved to Reims in 1898, where he was baptized. He went to school in Reims and then Épernay. Although brought up without religious observance, he converted to Catholicism in 1914, and became a devout Catholic for about nine years. He considered entering the priestho ...
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Memoirs Of Fanny Hill
''Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure''—popularly known as ''Fanny Hill''—is an erotic novel by English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London,Wagner, "Introduction", in Cleland, ''Fanny Hill'', 1985, p. 7. it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history. The book exemplifies the use of euphemism. The text has no "dirty words" or explicit scientific terms for body parts, but uses many literary devices to describe genitalia. For example, the vagina is sometimes referred to as "the nethermouth", which is also an example of psychological displacement. A critical edition by Peter Sabor includes a bibliography and explanatory notes. The collection ''Launching "Fanny Hill"'' contains several essays on the historical, social and economic themes underlying the novel. Publis ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Maurice Girodias
Maurice Girodias (12 April 1919 – 3 July 1990) was a French publisher who founded the Olympia Press, specialising in risqué books, censored in Britain and America, that were permitted in France in English-language versions only. It evolved from his father’s Obelisk Press, famous for publishing Henry Miller’s ''Tropic of Cancer''. Girodias published Vladimir Nabokov's ''Lolita'', J. P. Donleavy’s ''The Ginger Man'' (involving a 20-year lawsuit), and works by Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, John Glassco and Christopher Logue. Early life Girodias was born Maurice Kahane in Paris, France, the son of Manchester-born Jack Kahane and a French heiress, Marcelle (''née'' Girodias). His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. Girodias lived a relatively idyllic childhood until the Depression forced his father to take up a new profession in Paris, publishing risqué books in English for the consumption of foreign tourists, who because of censorship could not ob ...
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Nadejda De Bragança
Prince Miguel of Braganza, Duke of Viseu (22 September 1878 – 21 February 1923) was a member of the exiled branch of the House of Braganza. The eldest son of the Miguelist pretender to the throne of Portugal he married an American heiress in 1909 and in 1920 renounced his rights to the throne. His full given names were ''Miguel Maria Sebastião Maximiliano Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Francisco de Assis e de Paula Eustáquio Carlos Afonso José Henrique Alberto Clemente Inácio Martinho António Gerardo Jorge Emerico Maurício''. Early life Miguel was born in Reichenau an der Rax, Austria-Hungary the eldest son and heir of the Miguelist pretender to the Portuguese throne Miguel, Duke of Braganza and his first wife Princess Elisabeth of Thurn and Taxis. Prince Miguel's father was the head of the non reigning branch of the Portuguese Royal House that had been exiled from Portugal. The exile was the result of the Portuguese law of banishment of 1834 and the constitution of 1838 which ...
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Laurence Bradford Dakin
Laurence Bradford Dakin (1904–1972) was a writer and poet born in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia and lived throughout Europe, eventually moving to Laguna Hills, California where he died. His best known work was ''Marco Polo: A Drama in Four Acts'' (1946), which reported sold over 30, 000 copies in the United States and was hailed by John Masefield as the "work of a genius." Dakin was published by Obelisk Press. His wife was water colour painter Ilene Dakin Ilene is a given name. Notable people with the name include: *Ilene Beckerman (born 1935), American writer *Ilene Berns (1943–2017), a record company director from Cleveland, Ohio * Ilene Chaiken (born 1957), television producer and writer *Ilene ... (née Stitchbury). References Artists from Nova Scotia Writers from Nova Scotia 1904 births 1972 deaths Canadian emigrants to the United States {{Canada-artist-stub ...
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Norah James
Norah Margaret Ruth Cordner James (1896 – 19 November 1979) was a prolific English novelist whose first book ''Sleeveless Errand'' (1929) was ruled obscene at the Bow Street Police Court. Early life Norah James was born in Hampstead, London, in 1896, to John Henry Cordner James and his wife Marie Cordner James. She had three brothers. Her father was a consulting mining engineer born in Redruth, Cornwall. Her mother was a British subject born in the United States. The family were living in Belsize Park Gardens at the time of the 1901 census and employed four servants. Career According to a newspaper report in 1930, before taking up writing James had been a sculptor, a trade union organiser for civil servants, motor driver, a journalist, the advertising manager for a British publisher, and the political secretary to a parliamentary candidate."Norah C. James, English Writer, Is Visitor in New York". Alta May Coleman, ''Chicago Daily Tribune'', 21 June 1930, p. 6. Her first no ...
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The Well Of Loneliness
''The Well of Loneliness'' is a lesbian novel by British author Radclyffe Hall that was first published in 1928 by Jonathan Cape. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose " sexual inversion" (homosexuality) is apparent from an early age. She finds love with Mary Llewellyn, whom she meets while serving as an ambulance driver in World War I, but their happiness together is marred by social isolation and rejection, which Hall depicts as typically suffered by "inverts", with predictably debilitating effects. The novel portrays "inversion" as a natural, God-given state and makes an explicit plea: "Give us also the right to our existence". Shortly after the book's publication, it had become the target of a campaign by James Douglas, editor of the ''Sunday Express''. Douglas wrote that "I would rather give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel." A British court judged it obscene because it defended "unn ...
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Radclyffe Hall
Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall (12 August 1880 – 7 October 1943) was an English poet and author, best known for the novel ''The Well of Loneliness'', a groundbreaking work in lesbian literature. In adulthood, Hall often went by the name John, rather than Marguerite. Early life Marguerite Antonia Radclyffe Hall was born in 1880 at "Sunny Lawn", Durley Road, Bournemouth, Hampshire (now Dorset), to Radclyffe ("Rat") Radclyffe-Hall (1846-1898) and Mary Jane Sager (née Diehl). Hall's father was a wealthy philanderer, educated at Eton and Oxford but seldom working, since he inherited a large amount of money from his father, an eminent physician who was head of the British Medical Association; her mother was an unstable American widow from Philadelphia.Vargo, Marc E"Scandal: Infamous Gay Controversies of the Twentieth Century"pp. 56-57 Radclyffe's father left in 1882, abandoning young Radclyffe and her mother. However, he did leave behind a considerable inheritance for Radclyf ...
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Norman Douglas
George Norman Douglas (8 December 1868 – 7 February 1952) was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel ''South Wind''. His travel books, such as ''Old Calabria'' (1915), were also appreciated for the quality of their writing. Life Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria (his surname was registered at birth as ''Douglass''). His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz. His father was John Sholto Douglas (1838–1874), manager of a cotton mill, who died in a hunting accident when Douglas was about six. He spent the first years of his life on the family estate, Villa Falkenhorst, in Thüringen. Douglas was brought up mainly at Tilquhillie, Deeside, his paternal home in Scotland. He was educated at Yarlet Hall and Uppingham School in England, and then at a grammar school in Karlsruhe. Douglas's paternal grandfather was the 14th Laird of Tilquhillie. Douglas's maternal great-grandfather was General James Ochoncar Forbes, 17th Lord Forbes. He started in the diplomati ...
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