Originally published in 1990, Women of Bloomsbury takes a fresh look at the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, and Dora Carrington. Connected by more than bonds of friendship and artistic endeavour, the three women faced similar struggles. Juxtaposing their personal lives and their work, Mary Ann Caws shows us with feeling and clarity the pain women suffer in being artists and in finding - or creating - their sense of self. Relying on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as familiar texts, Caws give us a portrait of the female self in the act of creation.

Originally published in 1990, Women of Bloomsbury takes a fresh look at the lives of Virginia Woolf, her sister Vanessa Bell, and Dora Carrington. Connected by more than bonds of friendship and artistic endeavour, the three women faced similar struggles. Juxtaposing their personal lives and their work, Mary Ann Caws shows us with feeling and clarity the pain women suffer in being artists and in finding - or creating - their sense of self. Relying on unpublished letters and diaries, as well as familiar texts, Caws give us a portrait of the female self in the act of creation.

The first comprehensive guide to the prose poem, this book covers the history of the genre from Aloyisius Bertrand's Gaspard de la nuit and Baudelaire's Paris Spleen to its most important modern and contemporary practitioners. It gives special attention to the genre's hybridity as well as to its propensity to engage in a dialogue with other genres, discourses and artistic forms. Written by prominent scholars of modern and contemporary poetry and poetics, The Edinburgh Companion to the Prose Poem offers analytical and historically informed narratives of the genre's transformations and variations across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and into the next.

The Selected Poems of Rene Char is a comprehensive, bilingual overview reflecting the poet s wide stylistic and philosophical range, from aphorism to dramatic lyricism. In making their selections, the editors have chosen the voices of seventeen poets and translators (Paul Auster, Samuel Beckett, Cid Corman, Eugene Jolas, W.S. Merwin, William Carlos Williams, and James Wright, to name a few), in homage to a writer long held in highest esteem by the literary avant-garde.

A revealing investigation into Picasso's career-long fascination with the written word Throughout his life, Pablo Picasso had close friendships with writers and an abiding interest in the written word. This groundbreaking book, which draws on the collections of Yale University, traces the relationship that Picasso had with literature and writing in his life and work. Beginning with the artist's early associations with such writers as Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Pierre Reverdy, the book continues until the postwar period, by which time Picasso had become a worldwide celebrity. Distinguished authorities in art and literature explore the theme of Picasso and language from historical, linguistic, and visual perspectives and contextualize Picasso's work within a rich literary framework. Presenting fascinating archival materials and written in an accessible style, Picasso and the Allure of Language is essential reading for anyone interested in this great artist and the history of modernism. Published in association with the Yale University Art Gallery Exhibition Schedule: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (January 27 - May 24, 2009) Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham (August 20, 2009 - January 3, 2010)

Mina Loy was born in London in 1882, became American, and lived variously in New York, Europe, and finally, Aspen, Colorado until she died in 1966. Flamboyant and unapologetically avant-garde, she was a painter, poet, novelist, essayist, manifesto-writer, actress, and dress and lampshade designer. Her life involved an impossible abundance of artistic friends, performance and spectacular adventures in the worlds of Futurism, Christian Science, Feminism, Fashion, and everything modern and modernist. This new account by Mary Ann Caws explores Mina Loy's exceptional life, and features many rare images of Loy and her husband, the swiss writer, poet, artist, boxer and provocateur Arthur Cravan, who disappeared without trace in 1918.

Food has always been a favourite subject of the world's artists, from still-lifes by Matisse and Picasso to the works of Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol. But how do artists eat? The Modern Art Cookbook provides a window into how both great and lesser-known modern artists, writers and poets ate, cooked, depicted and wrote about food. A cornucopia of life in the kitchen and in the studio throughout the twentieth century and beyond, the book explores a wide-ranging panoply of artworks of food, cooking and eating from Europe and the Americas - from the early moderns through the Impressionists, Symbolists, Cubists, Futurists and Surrealists up to today's art - as well as writing about food from contemporary novelists, writers and poets. Beautifully illustrated and often surprising, this new paperback edition is a joyous guide to the art of food.

"Mad Love" has been acknowledged an undisputed classic of the surrealist movement since its first publication in France in 1937. Its adulation of love as both mystery and revelation places it in the most abiding of literary traditions, but its stormy history and technical difficulty have prevented it from being translated into English until now.

"There has never been any forbidden fruit. Only temptation is divine," writes Andre Breton, leader of the surrealists in Paris in the 1920s and '30s. "Mad Love" is dedicated to defying "the widespread opinion that love wears out, like the diamond, in its own dust." Celebrating breton's own love and lover, the book unveils the marvelous in everyday encounters and the hidden depths of ordinary things.

A comprehensive bilingual collection of twentieth-century French poetry Not since the publication of Paul Auster's The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry (1984) has there been a significant and widely read anthology of modern French poetry in the English-speaking world. Here for the first time is a comprehensive bilingual representation of French poetic achievement in the twentieth century, from the turn-of-the-century poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire to the high modernist art of Samuel Beckett to the contemporary verse of scourge Michel Houellebecq. Many of the English translations (on facing pages) are justly celebrated, composed by eminent figures such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery; many others are new and have been commissioned for this book. Distinguished scholar and editor Mary Ann Caws has chosen work by more than 100 poets. Her deliberately extensive, international selection includes work by Francophone poets, by writers better known for accomplishments in other genres (novelists, songwriters, performance artists), and by many more female poets than have typically been represented in past anthologies of modern French poetry. The editor has opted for a chronological organization that highlights six crucial "pressure points" in modern French poetry. Accompanying the selections are a general introduction, informative essays on each period, and short biographical notes-all prepared by the editor.

Capital of Pain, is considered one of the key texts of surrealism. This is the first new translation into English of this work in over 30 years and the only edition available in the English language. This edition presents the text in its entirety in a bilingual format and includes an extensive essay on Eluard's works by Mary Ann Caws. This book has had a lasting effect on poets and readers since it exploded unto the literary scene in 1926 and has never been out of print in Europe since.

This singular book illustrates how to edit a piece of prose and enhance its clarity of thought and felicity of style. The authors first present ten principles of effective composition, and then scrutinize three extended paragraphs, suggesting with remarkable specificity how to improve them. The volume also offers challenging practice questions, as well as two finished essays, one serious and one humorous, that demonstrate how attention to sound mechanics need not result in mechanical writing. Steven M. Cahn and Victor L. Cahn help readers deploy a host of corrective strategies, such as avoiding jargon, bombast, and redundancy; varying sentence structure; paring the use of adjectives and adverbs; properly deploying phrases and clauses; and refining an argument. Here is a book for all who seek to increase their facility in written communication.

This singular book illustrates how to edit a piece of prose and enhance its clarity of thought and felicity of style. The authors first present ten principles of effective composition, and then scrutinize three extended paragraphs, suggesting with remarkable specificity how to improve them. The volume also offers challenging practice questions, as well as two finished essays, one serious and one humorous, that demonstrate how attention to sound mechanics need not result in mechanical writing. Steven M. Cahn and Victor L. Cahn help readers deploy a host of corrective strategies, such as avoiding jargon, bombast, and redundancy; varying sentence structure; paring the use of adjectives and adverbs; properly deploying phrases and clauses; and refining an argument. Here is a book for all who seek to increase their facility in written communication.

The vital synergy between dress and the cinema has been in place since the advent of film. Broaching topics such as vampires, noir, and Marie Antoinette looks, Fashion in Film uncovers the way in which the alliance of these two powerhouse industries use myriad cultural influences shaping narrative, national identity, and all points in between. Contributor essays address international films from early cinema to the present, drawing on the classic and the innovative. This abundantly illustrated collection reveals that fashion in conjunction with film must be understood in a different way from fashion tout simple."

Self-Shadowing Prey, one of the final texts by the Romanian poet Gherasim Luca (1913-1994), is clearly constructed around the sought complications of language. Embodying the surrealist operation of play with considerable exactitude and rigor, Self-Shadowing Prey is rich with neologistic stupors, nouns made verbs, and compelling repetitions and linguistic expansions. Language is not merely put into play but made to participate in an erotic act, and words become the locus of an exploding self. This linguistically-joyous text reveals the arresting syntactic creation and creative stammering which Deleuze and Guattari both saw in Luca and what led Deleuze to call him a great poet among the greatest. "If Gherasim Luca's speech is eminently poetic," Deleuze pronounced, "it is because he makes stuttering an affect of language and not an affectation of speech. The entire language spins and varies in order to disengage a final block of sound, a single breath at the limit of the cry, JE T'AIME PASSIONNEMENT." Transformed for the first time into English by distinguished translator Mary Ann Caws, this bi-lingual edition of Self-Shadowing Prey gives us yet one more important text by a key figure of the Romanian branch of Surrealism. In addition, it is the first book of Luca's verse ever to be translated into English. "Gherasim Luca is a great poet among the greatest: he invented a prodigious stammering, his own." -Deleuze "Mary Ann Caws' passionate translations render deft, delightful facets of the formidable Gherasim Luca: virile servings of refreshment and tumult, liberating language from the yoke of Duty. This collection pairs and contrasts well with the churning self-surgery we had the pleasure of smuggling from Romanian. Self-Shadowing Prey calls for vertiginous reading, in exhilarating reflection of the sonorous scintillations of Luca's own reading performances." -Julian and Laura Semilian, translators of Gherasim Luca's The Inventor of Love & Other Works

This book gives comprehensive coverage of Woolf's reception across Europe with contributions from leading international critics and translators.The intellectual scope and cultural impact of British writers cannot be assessed without reference to their European 'fortunes'. These essays, prepared by an international team of scholars, critics and translators, record the ways in which Virginia Woolf has been translated, evaluated and emulated in different national and linguistic areas of Europe.Diverse as her reception has been, as analyst of consciousness, as a decadent (censored and banned), as stylistic innovator of Modernism, as crusading feminist and socialist, and as a model for other writers, she has emerged as one of the foremost writers and principal icons of the century.Our knowledge of British and Irish authors is incomplete and inadequate without an understanding of the perspectives of other nations on them. Each volume examines the ways authors have been translated, published, distributed, read, reviewed and discussed in Europe. In doing so, it throws light not only on the specific strands of intellectual and cultural history but also on the processes involved in the dissemination of ideas and texts.

Aristocrat, novelist, essayist, traveler, and lover of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West lived a fascinating and daring life on the periphery of the Bloomsbury circle. She wrote in an astounding variety of genres, including travel narrative, historical and literary studies, poetry, fiction, and essays, and is probably best known or her novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, and incomparable writings about English country houses and gardens. Here, for the first time, is an anthology that represents the full expanse of her interests and styles. Over half of the works, including intimate diaries and a dream notebook, have never been published. Edited by a foremost expert on the Bloomsbury circle, Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings provides the best and most accessible introduction to this unique writer.

The intellectual scope and cultural impact of British writers cannot be assessed without reference to their European "fortunes". These essays, prepared by an international team of scholars, critics and translators, record the ways in which Virginia Woolf has been translated, evaluated and emulated in different national and linguistic areas of Europe. Diverse as her reception has been, as analyst of consciousness, as a decadent (censored and banned), as stylistic innovator of Modernism, as crusading feminist and socialist, and as a model for other writers, she has emerged as one of the foremost writers and principal icons of the century

Aristocrat, novelist, essayist, traveler, and lover of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West lived a fascinating and daring life on the periphery of the Bloomsbury circle. She wrote in an astounding variety of genres, including travel narrative, historical and literary studies, poetry, fiction, and essays, and is probably best known or her novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, and incomparable writings about English country houses and gardens. Here, for the first time, is an anthology that represents the full expanse of her interests and styles. Over half of the works, including intimate diaries and a dream notebook, have never been published. Edited by a foremost expert on the Bloomsbury circle, Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings provides the best and most accessible introduction to this unique writer.

These sixteen illustrated essays present an important revision of surrealism by focusing on the works of women surrealists and their strategies to assert positions as creative subjects within a movement that regarded woman primarily as an object of masculine desire or fear.While the male surrealists attacked aspects of the bourgeois order, they reinforced the traditional patriarchal image of woman. Their emphasis on dreams, automatic writing, and the unconscious reveal some of the least inhibited masculine fantasies. The first resistance to the male surrealists' projection of the female figure arose in the writings and paintings of marginalized woman artists and writers associated with Surrealism. The essays in this collection explore the complexity of these women's works, which simultaneously employ and subvert the dominant discourse of male surrealists.Mary Ann Caws is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Rudolf Kuenzli is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the International Dada Archive at the University of Iowa. Gwen Raaberg is Director of the Center for Women's Resources and Research at Western Michigan University.The Essays: What Do Little Girls Dream Of: The Insurgent Writing of Gisi1/2le Prassinos. Finding What You Are Not Looking For. From Di1/2jeuner en fourrure to Caroline: Meret Oppenheim's Chronicle of Surrealism. Speaking with Forked Tongues: "Male" Discourse in "Female" Surrealism? Androgyny: Interview with Meret Oppenheim. The Body Subversive: Corporeal Imagery in Carrington, Prassinos, and Mansour. Identity Crises: Joyce Mansour's Narratives. Joyce Mansour and Egyptian Mythology. In the Interim: The Constructivist Surrealism of Kay Sage. The Flight from Passion in Leonora Carrington's Literary Work. Beauty and/Is the Beast: Animal Symbology in the Work of Leonora Carrington, Remedio Varo, and Leonor Fini. Valentine, Andri1/2, Paul et les autres, or the Surrealization of Valentine Hugo. Refashioning the World to the Image of Female Desire: The Collages of Aube Elli1/2oui1/2t. Eileen Agar. Statement by Dorothea Tanning."

Originating in 1916 with the avant-garde Dada movement at the famous Cafe Voltaire in Zurich, surrealism aimed to unleash the powers of the creative act without thinking. Max Ernst, Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, Paul Eluard, Philippe Soupault, and Louis Aragon created a movement that spread wildly to all corners of the globe, inspiring not only poetry but also artists like Joan Miro and Rene Magritte and cinematic works by Antonin Artaud, Luis Bunuel, and Salvador Dali. As the editor, Mary Ann Caws, says, "Essential to surrealist behavior is a constant state of openness, of readiness for whatever occurs, whatever marvelous object we might come across, manifesting itself against the already thought, the already lived." Here are the gems of this major, mind-bending aesthetic, political, and humane movement: writers as diverse as Aragon, Breton, Dali, Rene Char, Robert Desnos, Mina Loy, Paul Magritte, Alice Paalen, Gisele Prassinos, Man Ray, Kay Sage, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven are included here, providing a grand picture of this revolutionary movement that shocked the world.

"The Lost Steps" ("Les Pas perdus") is Andre Breton's first collection of critical and polemical essays. Composed between 1917 and 1923, these pieces trace his evolution during the years when he was emerging as a central figure in French (and European) intellectual life. They chronicle his tumultuous passage through the Dada movement, proclaim his explosive views on Modernism and its heroes, and herald the emergence of Surrealism itself. Along the way, we are given Breton's serious commentaries on his Modernist predecessors, Guillaume Apollinaire and Alfred Jarry, followed by his not-so-serious Dada manifestoes.

Also included are portraits of Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Breton's mysterious friend Jacques Vache, as well as a crisis-by-crisis account of his dealing with Dada's leader, Tristan Tzara. Finally, Breton offers a first glimpse of Surrealism, the movement that was forever after identified with his name and that stands as a defining force in twentieth-century aesthetics.