A “valuable and intriguing” study of the lives and works of literary women who shaped expatriate Paris (NPR).

Focusing on some two dozen American, English, and French women whose talent shaped the Paris expatriate experience in the early twentieth century, from Anais Nin to Alice B. Toklas and beyond, this book shines new light on how gender was experienced and expressed during an important moment in modern literary history.

"Shari Benstock . . . weaves together, with great skill, the histories of an extraordinary group of talented women—publishers like Sylvia Beach, Caresse Crosby, Margaret Anderson, and Jane Heap, novelists Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, and Edith Wharton. She examines in some depth the writing produced by poets, journalists and novelists, thus combining literary criticism and social history in a seamless running narrative.” —NPR

“Through their writings, including unpublished and newly available documentary sources of the period, Djuna Barnes, Nancy Cunard, Jean Rhys, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton and others are revealed as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. . . . Benstock tracks the sexually liberated lifestyles and the creative originality of these women with a wealth of documentation.” —Publishers Weekly

“An inspiration, setting a standard for literary history and feminist criticism that will be difficult to surpass.” —American Literature