Obelisk Press was an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 press based in Paris, France, which was founded by Jack Kahane

Jack Kahane

Jack Kahane was a Manchester-born writer and publisher who founded the Obelisk Press in Paris in 1929.He was the son of Selig and Susy Kahane, both Romanian-born immigrants. Kahane, a novelist, began the Obelisk Press after his publisher, Grant Richards, went bankrupt...

 in 1929.

Kahane, a novelist, began the Obelisk Press after his publisher, Grant Richards, went bankrupt. Going into partnership with a printer, Kahane, as Cecil Barr, published his next novel Daffodil under his own imprint. A writer and publisher of 'db's ("dirty books"), Kahane mixed serious work with smut in his list; he was able to take advantage of a legal loop-hole whereby books published in France in English were not subject to the censorship otherwise practised at the time, but were still subject to confiscation when importation was attempted.

Henry Miller

Henry Miller

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Cancer (novel)

Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...

, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States; Obelisk published five more books by Miller, as well as Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington

Richard Aldington , born Edward Godfree Aldington, was an English writer and poet.Aldington was best known for his World War I poetry, the 1929 novel, Death of a Hero, and the controversy arising from his 1955 Lawrence of Arabia: A Biographical Inquiry...

's Death of a Hero

Death of a Hero

Death of a Hero is a World War I novel by Richard Aldington. It was his first novel, written in 1929, and thought to be partly autobiographical.-Plot summary:...

(1930), Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin was a French-Cuban author, based at first in France and later in the United States, who published her journals, which span more than 60 years, beginning when she was 11 years old and ending shortly before her death, her erotic literature, and short stories...

's Winter of Artifice (1939), Cyril Connolly

Cyril Connolly

Cyril Vernon Connolly was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon and wrote Enemies of Promise , which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of...

's first book and only novel, The Rock Pool

The Rock Pool

The Rock Pool is a novel written by Cyril Connolly, first published in 1936. It is Connolly's only novel and is set at the end of season in a small resort in the south of France...

(1936), James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

's Haveth Childers Everywhere and Pomes Penyeach (1932), Frank Harris

Frank Harris

Frank Harris was a Irish-born, naturalized-American author, editor, journalist and publisher, who was friendly with many well-known figures of his day...

's My Life and Loves

My Life and Loves

My Life and Loves is the autobiography of the Ireland-born, naturalized-American writer and editor Frank Harris . As published privately by Harris between 1922 and 1927, and by Jack Kahane's Obelisk Press in 1931, the work consisted of four volumes, illustrated with many drawings and photographs of...

(1934) and Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence Durrell

Lawrence George Durrell was an expatriate British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer, though he resisted affiliation with Britain and preferred to be considered cosmopolitan...

's The Black Book (1938), Squadron 95 by war hero Harold Buckley

Harold Buckley

Captain Harold Robert Buckley was a World War I flying ace credited with five aerial victories.-World War I service:Buckley was one of the American pilots who came to aviation via an ambulance service. Once in France, he joined the U.S. Army Air Service in Paris. He found himself assigned to the...

, James Hanley's Boy (1935) and Limericks by Norman Douglas

Norman Douglas

George Norman Douglas was a British writer, now best known for his 1917 novel South Wind.-Life:Norman Douglas was born in Thüringen, Austria . His mother was Vanda von Poellnitz...

. He reprinted Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness.- Life :...

's The Well of Loneliness

The Well of Loneliness

The Well of Loneliness is a 1928 lesbian novel by the British author Radclyffe Hall. It follows the life of Stephen Gordon, an Englishwoman from an upper-class family whose "sexual inversion" is apparent from an early age...

, which had been banned in Britain in 1928. Kahane published many forgotten authors like Norah James, Canadian poet Lawrence Dakin or Nadejda de Bragança. His wife Marcelle and their son Maurice (later known as Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...

) worked as cover illustrators for the imprint.

Kahane died within days of the outbreak of World War Two, having just finished his final book, on 3 September 1939. This book, Memoirs of a Booklegger, marked the end of Obelisk for several years, until his son (Girodias took his mother's birth name during the war to evade detection as a Jew) briefly revived it in the years following the war.

Selling in large quantities to the American G.I.s passing through Paris on their return home, Miller's best-known works were republished alongside other English language books such as Memoirs of Fanny Hill. Girodias also published a few important works in French including George Bataille's literary review Critique

Critique

Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic analysis of a written or oral discourse. Critique is commonly understood as fault finding and negative judgement, but it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt...

and Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis

Nikos Kazantzakis was a Greek writer and philosopher, celebrated for his novel Zorba the Greek, considered his magnum opus...

's Alexis Zorbas (1947). Girodias largely abandoned the Obelisk Press name when he discovered that new titles under the name would not sell.