Sydney and Violet: A Modernist Power Couple and Their Life with Eliot, Proust, Joyce, Huxley, Mansfield, Picasso and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis

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.