The Black Sun Press was an English language book publisher founded in 1927 as Éditions Narcisse by poet Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby (née Mary Phelps Jacob), American expatriates living in Paris. In April 1927 they named their press after their black whippet Narcisse, and they used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely-made, hard-bound volumes. They enjoyed the reception their initial work received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun.
They printed limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. In 1928, as Éditions Narcisse, they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads of many emerging American writers who were living abroad. They published early works of a number of writers before they were well-known, including James Joyce's Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (which was later integrated into Finnegans Wake. They published Kay Boyle's first book-length work, Short Stores, in 1929. and works by Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Laurence Sterne, and Eugene Jolas. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Harry died in a suicide pact with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing into the 1940s.
Read more about Black Sun Press: Publish Own Works, Expand Press, Support Experimental Writing, Expand Literary Circle, Beautiful Books in Limited Editions, Affair and Suicide, Caresse Continues Publishing, Reputation, Later Value, Works
Famous quotes containing the words black sun, black, sun and/or press:
“My black sun, my
Odessa sunflower,
spurs of Tartar gold
ring at your ankles,
you stand taller before me than the ten
towers of Jerusalem.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don’t rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions.... This ... appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“As the shade went up
And the ambulance came crashing through the dust
Of the new day, the moon and the sun and the stars,
And the iceberg slowly sank
In the volcano and the sea ran far away
Yellow over the hot sand, green as the green trees.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll;
On plastic clay and leathern scroll,
Man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed,
And lo! the Press was found at last!”
—John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892)