Robert mcalmon biography

1. Biography of Robert McAlmon
2. Life in Paris and Publishing
3. Notable Works and Later Years

Biography of Robert McAlmon

Robert McAlmon, an American writer, poet, and publisher, was one of the most prominent figures of the literary modernist movement in 1920s Paris. He was born on March 9, 1895, in Clifton, Kansas, as the youngest of ten children in a family of itinerant Presbyterian preachers. In 1916, McAlmon enrolled at the University of Minnesota but only spent one semester there before joining the United States Army Air Corps. After the end of World War I, he returned to his studies and enrolled at the University of Southern California in 1919. However, in 1920, he decided to move to Chicago and then to New York City, where he initially worked as a nude model in an art school to make a living. In New York, McAlmon settled in the bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village and became acquainted with poet William Carlos Williams. Together, they worked on the publication of the modernist journal 'Contact Review,' which had a short-lived run but managed to publish works by Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, Hilda Doolittle, Kay Boyle, and Marsden Hartley.

Life in Paris and Publishing

In 1921, Robert McAlmon moved to Paris and entered into a fictitious marriage with wealthy English writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, better known by her pen name Bryher. Bryher was a lesbian and deeply in love with Hilda Doolittle, so their union was a marriage of convenience – she gained independence from her parents, and he obtained financial security. Despite the apparent harmony, they divorced in 1927. In Paris, McAlmon met and befriended James Joyce, for whom he printed and edited the manuscript of 'Ulysses.' Moreover, after moving to Europe, Robert became a prolific writer, with many of his stories and poems based on his youthful experiences growing up in South Dakota. In 1922, with the help of Maurice Darantière, Joyce's printer, McAlmon published a collection of short stories called 'A Hasty Bunch' in Dijon. The following year, in 1923, he founded his own publishing company, the 'Contact Publishing Company,' with funds from his father-in-law. The 'Contact Edition' publishing house lasted until 1929 and managed to release Bryher's book 'Two Selves,' Hilda Doolittle's 'Palimpsest,' Ernest Hemingway's first book 'Three Stories and Ten Poems,' Marsden Hartley's poetry, Wallace Stevens' poetry collection 'Spring and All,' and Ford Madox Ford's prose, among others. Additionally, McAlmon published 'The Hurried Man,' the only book by Emanuel Carnevali published during his lifetime, Gertrude Stein's 'The Making of Americans,' Mary Butts' 'Ashe of Rings,' and many other works by representatives of the 'lost generation'. Texas schoolteacher Gertrude Beasley published 'My First Thirty Years' under his publishing house. Riding the wave of interest in Eastern exoticism, McAlmon printed 'Quaint Tales of Samurais,' a collection of works by 17th-century Japanese poet Ihara Saikaku. He also financed the publication of 'The Ladies Almanack' by Djuna Barnes.

Notable Works and Later Years

One of McAlmon's most successful works was the book 'Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period' (1924), which depicted the bleak everyday life of a small American town. It becomes evident from the book that McAlmon had an affection for Eugene Luther Vidal, the father of Gore Vidal, as he portrayed him under the name Eugene Collins. They both grew up in Madison, South Dakota, as indicated by Gore Vidal's memoirs. Among McAlmon's other works are the short story collection 'A Companion Volume' (1923), the autobiographical novel 'Post-Adolescence' (1923), 'Distinguished Air (Grim Fairy Tales)' (1925), poetry collections 'The Portrait of a Generation' (1926) and 'Not Alone Lost' (1937), the 1200-line epic poem 'North America, Continent of Conjecture' (1929), and the memoir 'Being Geniuses Together: An Autobiography' (1938).

In 1940, McAlmon returned to the United States. He died on February 2, 1956, at his sister's house in Desert Hot Springs, California. In his final years, forgotten by most of his Parisian friends and virtually unknown in his homeland, he struggled with depression and alcoholism but desperately sought a publisher for his works. Unfortunately, they found their publisher only in the 1990s.