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 neglect left the child emotionally impoverished. This nonfiction biography covers the 14 years from 1920 when she moved from England to Paris to escape her mother's domination. Fueled by the energy of her rage against her mother, Cunard set off on her most dazzling years.
During the 1920s, art, design, and literature flourished in Paris.Paris of the 1920s is presented with the full glory of the golden age of jazz and the people who made it happen. De Courcy's book includes many fascinating facts about Paris and the Jazz Age. The author, Anne De Courcy is a well-known social historian and author.
The biography was so well written that the brief mentions of well-known artists made me feel as if I were a part of the adventure. The author described the era with such realism that I felt as if I were there at times. I'd like to thank NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me an advance review copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.
Nancy Cunard was a letdown for me as a subject. Even her victories appeared to be failures, owing in large part to her unfortunate childhood. It's unfortunate that she had such a life, but that doesn't justify me spending an evening reading about her. I read for entertainment, not to watch someone squander their life away. "Magnificent Rebel" is a celebrity biography. It is a historical manuscript about the art and artists of the Paris jazz era. I recommend it to readers who enjoy this era. I also recommend it to anyone who is interested in Nancy Cunard's life. If, on the other hand, you're sensitive to reading about the process by which a woman's life disintegrates, you might want to look on a different shelf.

My absolute favorite era in history to be sure! I love the 1920s and reading about that time in history. This book about Nancy Cunard has it all, the magic of Paris in the 20s, the art, the literature, the breakthrough of so much that was new, uninhibited, free. The new hard-won freedoms that women were just beginning to experience, it is all in this book, exemplified by Nancy Cunard's life in Paris during a most pivotal era in our history.
This book tells of Nancy's life, her lovers and friends, her affairs with famous writers, the likes of Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, and more.
This is a fascinating look at Cunard's world, primarily centering around 5 love affairs that stand out as important as to the depth of impact and lasting impression upon her life.
For me the best parts of this book is how well it depicts life in Paris in the 20s., more specifically life in the artistic Montparnasse suburb of Paris, where all the renowned artists and writers would come together to discuss, create and influence their generation and future generations thereafter.
If you enjoy reading about Paris and enjoy reading about the time between WWI and WWII, the 1920s, you will love this story and look at all that made that city at that particular time in history an utterly magical place to be.
I give 5 stars and recommend highly. Thank you to St. Martin's Press and to Net Galley for the free ARC, I am leaving my honest review voluntarily.

Magnificent Rebel is the story of Nancy Cunard and the years she lived in Paris. It reads like a Who's Who of Parisian ex-Pat glitterati and some French artists thrown in. I think we are meant to read the book as her rebellion against her bourgeois upbringing, especially her mother.
In the end, this was another story of a beautiful rich girl caught up by jazz-age Paris but never involving herself much with the French. We are reminded that her obsession became all things Africa but that is another book. There was nothing especially different about Nancy's story that we don't already know.
If you like biographies, you may enjoy this.

I highly disliked the main character and it became more of a force of will to finish this book because I was fascinated by the people around her. The story was well written but Nancy was a horrible human being. I love the insight into the world she lived in. The research was incredible and the epistolary aspects of the novel were an incredible insight into this time.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC and all opinions expressed are my own.

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 have been a magical place. I understand the shadow of the war the slaughter of so many people influenced quite a lot of the thinking, but the art that came from this time, the movements, the ideas, all from a mélange of different people. Russian émigrés fleeing Communism, Americans black and white, some coming for the freedom that was denied them at home, some for starting over and finding a muse. And rich English people who came for the party and found so much more. Nancy Cunard was the daughter of a shipping heir who found herself in the mix, and soon was one of the most influential people in Paris, whose relationships with five men changed them, sometimes for the better, and herself. Anne de Courcy in her biography on Nancy Cunard, Magnificent Rebel: Nancy Cunard in Jazz Age Paris tells the story of this jazz age stalwart, her life, loves, heartaches, her being muse to some and burden to others.

Born of an English father who was heir to the Cunard Shipping line, and a man who loved the outdoors, and an American who hated to be outside, Nancy Cunard grew up mostly ignored, in a manor house outside of Leicestershire. After her parents divorced when she was 15 Nancy and her mother moved to London, where she discovered a life of fun and freedom that she enjoyed. She married, later divorced, and lost her one possible true love to the killing fields that were Europe during the First War, something that she never got over. Arriving in Paris in 1920, she felt at home and soon begin hanging around with those involved in both artistic and literary movements, like Dada and Surrealism. She wrote poems, and became involved in relationships with many writers including Ezra Pound, Aldous Huxley, and musicians one of which opened her mind to the world and the discriminations that lived under.

I will admit I knew very little about Nancy Cunard when I started this book. I don't believe I have ever read anything that she wrote, but after reading this biography I really feel I am missing something. What a fascinating life. Cunard knew so many people, and in turn was influenced by many people into doing things that seem far forward in thinking than one would expect. She was involved in race issues, was anti- fascist which is always good. Owned a publishing house that published Samuel Beckett. Yes the money helped, but a lot of what she did, she did because she wanted to, and it was right. Though there were times in the book that her attitude was a little grating. And self- centered, and egotistical. However that can be said about all of us. The book is very well written, with lots of research of course, but the way that de Courcy writes really sets the scene, the time, the place and how certain events all came together for the one either romantic or creative moment. For someone I knew nothing about, I feel quite an affinity for Nancy Cunard, and really enjoyed this book.

Recommended for readers of the Jazz age, or for people who like stories about literature and the people involved in it. Also for those who enjoy French history. And people who enjoy biographies about strong women, doing fascinating things. A very good biography about a very intriguing person.

"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 true trailblazer and one whose life hasn't been saturated in publishing!

Might as well be upfront about it: this is a depressing book. Here we have a woman of intelligence and privilege, damaged by parental neglect and spending her whole life self-destructively. Her parents paid little attention to her, she was an only child, and her nanny was cold and authoritarian. No surprise that all of this led to Nancy Cunard becoming addicted to a life filled with parties, lovers, and drink.

I suppose it’s slightly less sad that at least she cared about the arts, was a poet herself and preferred to spend her time with writers, musicians and other artists. She founded the Hours Press, which in its short four-year run published Samuel Beckett’s first book, and much contemporary poetry, hand-printed in fine editions. She was a ferocious anti-racist and anti-fascist. She edited an anthology of African-American literature and nonfiction, and during World War II she worked tirelessly in London as a translator to assist the French Resistance.

At the same time, Cunard can be infuriating to read about. She could be extremely selfish; just one example is that she habitually propped open the elevator door in one of the buildings she lived in so that it would always be available to her. She didn’t care about hurting others’ feelings, and would pester her friends and the objects of her affection with whatever her obsession of the moment happened to be. She sounds exhausting.

Cunard became a hopeless alcoholic and, as she aged, her behavior became erratic and sometimes violent. She also lacked for money in her later years, and her famous friends faded away. She died a miserable and lonely death.

While reading about Cunard is often depressing, this book is extremely well-researched and has a wealth of fascinating stories about the many artists and the like who thronged Paris in the between-the-wars years. It’s particularly interesting to read about the African-American men who served in World War I, were treated far better in France than in the US, and returned in droves to live in France after the war.

I had never heard of Nancy Cunard, somehow, but I wish I had known about her longer. This book does an excellent job capturing her passions and spirit. The author focuses on Cunard’s great lives and uses them as the catalysts to tell the story of Nancy’s life. Literary greats feature here in abundance. Some knew Nancy before they were famous; some were already established when she encountered them. This magnificent rebel was the muse for some of the greatest writers of all time. She lived a life of wealth and excess, but she lived a life devoid of fulfillment, happiness, and sustainable love. I really enjoyed learning more about Cunard and the exciting life she lived.

I really enjoy biographies about people in errors I am not all that familiar with - although sometimes that is a double-edged sword, because the lack of familiarity can make following such story lines difficult. That was the case here. There were many occasions in which schools of art, schools of thought, and individuals were referenced with whom I was not at all familiar - and while I do not mind looking things up on Google while I read, constant back and forth to look things up or check references does make it more difficult to continue to stay engaged with a narrative... So while I found this very interesting, it was a little more work than I expected. If you are familiar with the era and it's trappings, most notably intellectual and artistic, you would probably have a much easier time with this book than I did.

This book presupposes that you know a lot of information about the era already, which is fine, but it was not something I was totally prepared for. There are a lot of complicated diversions into the intricacies of things like Modernism and I found them to be dense and boring. I think this book has potential but definitely fell short. There were whole passages where the main subject, Nancy Cunard, was not mentioned even once.

This is tough for me. Anne de Courcy does a great job of letting the reader into the world of Nancy Cunard…who is an absolutely horrible human being. It’s hard to say how much of this is due to her upbringing by two utterly uninterested parents and more wealth than she spends most of her life knowing what to do with. The woman is thin-skinned, self-absorbed, cruel, drunk and fickle. After living the life of a wealthy debutante in London, she decides that she is bored and harks off to Paris, which in the 1920s is quite possibly one of the least boring places in the world. She frequently gets bored there, taking and dumping lovers, flitting about the continent and drinking…a lot. She gets involved in Dadaism and Surrealism, often of the purpose of protesting the conservative, uptight generations before them by being disruptive and inflammatory. She’s promiscuous, and refuses to take no for an answer. From the distanced perspective it’s hard to understand why people didn’t learn and walk away from her after being treated so poorly. In fact, no one ever seems more appealing to Nancy than when they’re uninterested in her. Her interest in people and projects seems to be driven by how edgy and controversial she can be. This woman is absolutely exhausting and repulsive. de Courcy doesn’t hold back, and doesn’t try to paint Nancy in positive light when there she doesn’t deserve it, which she usually doesn’t. The book feels a bit uneven; the beginning is often told directly in the voice of Nancy, from her letters and journal entries. Once she larks off to Paris this shifts more to other people’s observations instead of Nancy herself. I also feel like de Courcy overemphasizes Nancy’s relationship with Ezra Pound. She seems to spend more time chasing him because he’s uninterested in her than the pair having any kind of significant or romantic relationship. If you want to watch a rich, beautiful, charismatic woman destroy herself and the people around her this is the book for you. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Magnificent Rebel is a biography of Nancy Cunard, an English heiress who came of age during the roaring twenties. She knew and influenced such notables as Hemingway, Ezra Pound, TS Eliot, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, Aldous Huxley and Salvador Dali. She led a wild sybaritic life, fueled by alcohol and an insatiable need for sex. She stood out in Montparnasse, itself the center of a cyclone of creativity and innovation not seen before or since. Wherever she entered she was the natural center of attention. She was a poet of note and the first publisher to have published Beckett. She was known for her unique beauty, but there had to have been an ineffable quality about her that was compelling and inspired the famous and those bound to be famous to gravitate toward her. The author had the difficult or even impossible task of capturing this essence and did as well as anyone could have done. I suspect to really begin to appreciate this fully you had to have met her.

At the heart of this book is the best and most complete description of what life was like in the Montparnasse section of Paris during the 1920's: the little cafe's and boîtes, Shakespeare and Company, cheap, tasty food and alcohol, most of all it seems, alcohol. There were no real rules, neither socially nor artistically. The art school year, for example, ended with a wild debauche with bodies covered with paint and almost nothing else. It began with a parade (with a police escort no less) and ended at dawn, the naked guests washing the paint off in one of Paris' well known fountains. Gertrude Stein held court and Lindberg landed at Le Bourget. Hemingway filled his notebooks with quotes from his friends and wrote The Sun Also Rises. They were not amused. Magnificent Rebel would be worth 5 stars if all you had to read were these chapters.

Nancy Cunard from the 20's until her death had a deep interest in African art and more importantly African Americans and their plight. She was known for wearing dozens of African bracelets. To the degree she was capable of caring about anything, she cared about equality among the races. Unfortunately much of what she collected and wrote was destroyed by the Germans and collaborationist French during WW II

This was a wonderful book and I am grateful to Netgalley and St. Martin's press for an ARC.

I throughly enjoyed this departure from my normal reading genres! Nancy Cunard was so enviable in so many ways and not in some ways! The descriptions of Paris were amazing and made me feel like I was there. I’ve only been once in 2007 and I didn’t want to leave! Anne de Courcy did so well with this story and I definitely recommend it! Engrossing for sure.

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 in Paula McLain’s biographical fiction on Ernest Hemingway’s “The Paris Wife.” She was the epitome of a hard-core socialite with an “I don’t give a damn” attitude. She was also a poet and a journalist who founded “Hours Press.” She was promiscuous and a cruel lover. She didn’t care who she hurt as long as her needs were met. I wondered if she had a Borderline or Narcissistic personality disorder. She was an alcoholic, which may have or not have brought her on mental illness. This portrayal of a complex woman during the roaring twenties in the City of Lights is first-rate. Unfortunately, I thought I would read a biographical fiction novel, not a biography. I continued reading because the writing was good, and Nancy was a pistol.

Anne de Courcy provides a perfect illustration of Cunard's fascinating, moving life.
Set in Paris 1920s
Magnificent Rebel by Anne de Courcy is a great is a fascinating and ultimately poignant story.
The book is also truly engaging in the way it weaves together wonderful reminders of the eras in which she lived and vivid details throughout.
An interesting nonfiction biography that had me glued to my Kindle.

"I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own."

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really enjoyed learning about Nancy Cunard as a person and getting to see this time-period in her life. This book was well written and did everything that a good nonfiction book should do. I could tell how well Anne de Courcy did the research, I could tell that the author cared about this book and look forward to more.

"Monsieur Lévy had now gone, certainly to Nancy’s relief and one suspects to his also; instead, she was joined by a nice young printer who worked a solid eight hours a day. She was also lucky in that Sadoul, who had just found himself unemployed, needed a job at that moment."