Nancy Cunard

Nancy Cunard: Perfect Stranger reshapes our understanding of a woman, whose role in key historical,political, and cultural moments of the 20th century was eitherdismissed and attacked, or undervalued. Here, Jane Marcus, who was one of themost insightful critics of modernism and a pioneering feminist scholar, isunafraid and unapologetic in addressing and contesting Nancy Cunard’sreputation and reception as a spoiled heiress and “sexually dangerous NewWoman.” Instead, with her characteristic provocative and energetic writingstyle, Marcus insists we reconsiderissues of gender, race, and class in relation to the accusations, stereotypes,and scandal, which have dominated, and continue to dominate, our perception ofCunard in the public record. In the wake of inadequate histories of radical writingand activism, Nancy Cunard: PerfectStranger brings its subject into the 21st century, offering abold and innovative portrait of a woman we all thought we knew.