Sydney and Violet Paperback by Stephen Klaidman

Product Details

• Publisher: Anchor (2015-06-09)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 288 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780307742117
• Item Weight: 290.3 grams
• Dimensions: 8.0 x 5.18 x 0.8 cm

This long overdue biography of the power couple who nurtured and influenced the literary world of early twentieth-century England offers an intimate look at their dazzling circle.

Sydney and Violet Schiff were ubiquitous, Zelig-like figures in the most important literary movement of the twentieth century. Sydney was an admired writer and Violet was a talented musician who was among the first in England to recognize Proust’s genius; their friendships among the elite of the Modernist writers were remarkable and extensive. Stephen Klaidman tells the story of how the Schiffs, despite their commercial and Jewish origins, won a central place in the snobbish, anti-Semitic, literary world of the time. A colorful, highly personal account of the Modernist movement, Sydney and Violet brings to life a panoply of extravagant personalities: Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Mansfield, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and more.

About the Author

STEPHEN KLAIDMAN was an editor and reporter for twenty-three years at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune. He has taught at Georgetown University's Law Center and its School of Foreign Service, at Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, and at Pennsylvania State University. For ten years he also worked at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics and its Institute for Health Policy Analysis.