Nancy Cunard

Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon, who were among her lovers, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian socialist leader VK Krishna Menon. In later years, she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. She died at age 69, weighing only 26 kg (57 pounds), in the Hôpital Cochin, Paris.

Her father was Sir Bache Cunard, an heir to the Cunard Line shipping businesses, interested in polo and fox hunting, and a baronet. Her mother was Maud Alice Burke an American heiress, who adopted the first name Emerald and became a leading London society hostess. Nancy had been brought up on the family estate at Nevill Holt, Leicestershire but when her parents separated in 1911 she moved to London with her mother. Her education was at various boarding schools, including time in France and Germany. Whilst in London she spent a good deal of her childhood with her mother's long time admirer, the novelist George Moore. Indeed, it was even rumoured that Moore was her father, and though this has been largely dismissed, there is no question that he played an important role whilst she was growing up. She would later write a memoir about her affection for 'GM'.

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