Bill Bird
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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In 1927 Nancy Cunard moved into a farmhouse in La Chapelle-Réanville, Normandy. It was there in 1928 that she set up the Hours Press. Previously the small press had been called Three Mountains Press and run as a hobby by William Bird, an American journalist in Paris, who had already produced work by Ezra Pound. Cunard wanted to support experimental poetry and provide a higher-paying market for young writers; her inherited wealth allowed her to take financial risks that other publishers could not. Hours Press became known for its beautiful book designs and high-quality production.
It brought out the first separately published work of Samuel Beckett, a poem called Whoroscope (1930). It also published Pound's initial XXX Cantos. By 1931, Wyn Henderson had taken over day-to-day operation of the press, and in the same year it published its last book, The Revaluation of Obscenity by sexologist Havelock Ellis.
