No Modernism without Lesbians

The extraordinary story of how a singular group of women in a pivotal time and place – Paris, Between the Wars – fostered the birth of the Modernist movement. Sylvia Beach, Bryher, Natalie Barney, and Gertrude Stein. A trailblazing publisher, a patron of artists, a society hostess, a groundbreaking writer. All women who loved women, they rejected the patriarchy and made lives of their own – forming a community around themselves in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century.Each of these four central women interacted with a myriad of others, some of the most influential, most entertaining, most shocking and most brilliant figures of the age. Diana Souhami weaves their stories into those of the four central women to create a vivid moving tapestry of life among the Modernists in pre-War Paris.