One of the First French Female Booksellers
MONNIER, Adrienne. Souvenirs de Londres. Paris: Mercure de France. 1957.
8vo. Original card wrappers, titles in red and black to front wrappers and spine; pp. [vi], 105, [5], pages untrimmed and partially unopened; spine slightly sunned, preliminaries minimally toned, otherwise near fine.
First edition.
"C'est a cause de Debussy que je suis allee a Londres..." (It was because of Debussy that I went to London…).
Adrienne Monnier was a pivotal figure in 1920s and 30s and one of the first women in France to found her own bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres. She was also the lover of Sylvia Beach, owner another famous bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, responsible for the publication of Joyce's Ulysses in 1922.
Souvenirs de Londres details Monnier's experience in England and includes an eight-page account of Monnier's meeting with T.S. Eliot, whose poetry she published in her French language review, Le Navire d'Argent (The Silver Ship). A translation (prepared by both Monnier and Beach) of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" appeared in the review's first issue in May 1925.
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