'A work that radiates intelligence and grace...An ample portrait of ...an era' - "New York Times". 'The work of an energetic writer with an almost magic charm...[Monnier's] reactions to the sights and sounds of Paris and to the personalities who made it all possible stand as special cultural events of their own' - "New Republic". In 1920s Paris, Adrienne Monnier provided a focal point for the writers and artists drawn to the Left Bank. Her bookstore in the Rue de l'Odeon was aptly called La Maison des Amis des Livres. Monnier took a simple though sophisticated delight in language, books, art, music, nature, friendship, and food. Her 1940 journal, written as "Paris fell to the Germans" and originally published in 1976, is a rich tapestry of essays, reviews, and personal recollections.She goes to lunch with Colette, visits T. S. Eliot, befriends Joyce, argues with Breton, takes walks with Gide, publishes her elegant reviews, and reflects on the ballet, opera, Steinberg drawings, Marlon Brando and Alec Guinness movies, and the country of her birth. Richard McDougall is the translator of "Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth-Century Hermaphrodite".
Brenda Wineapple, Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College, Schenectady, New York, is the author of "Genet: A Biography of Janet Flanner", also a Bison Book.