Topic 2: Three Mountains & Contact

Robert McAlmon and Contact Editions

The Kansas-born Robert McAlmon had co-edited a little magazine titled contact in New York in 1920-1921. After marrying 'Bryher' (Winifred Ellerman, daughter of a British shipping magnate), McAlmon moved to Paris, where he met Beach, Joyce and Pound, and he began with Ellerman money to produce new literary works, including his own. His imprint Contact Publishing was to specialize in books "not likely to be published . . . for commercial or legislative reasons." The printings were done by Monnier's and Beach's Dijon printer Darantierre. Actually, Contact's two most famous publications, Hemingway's first book Three Stories & Ten Poems (Contact Editions, 1924) and Stein's Making of Americans (1925). Shown here, all in original wrappers, are one of McAlmon's own early, privately-printed books, A Hasty Bunch (Dijon: Darantierre, 1921), his poetry collection Portrait of a Generation, Including the Revolving Mirror (Contact Editions, 1926), and Robert M. Coates, The Eater of Darkness (Contact Editions, 1926, dedicated to McAlmon and Stein).
 
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Updated 5 June 2000 by the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.
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URL: http://www.sc.edu/library/spcoll/amlit/paris/paris2.html