12 Facts About Adrienne Monnier

Adrienne Monnier was a French bookseller, writer, and publisher, and an influential figure in the modernist writing scene in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s.

Adrienne Monnier's father, Clovis Monnier, was a postal worker, sorting mail in transit on night trains.

In 1909, aged 17, Adrienne Monnier graduated from high school, with a teaching qualification.

Adrienne Monnier spent three months working as an au pair, before finding a job for six months teaching French in Eastbourne.

Adrienne Monnier later wrote about her English experiences in Souvenirs de Londres.

Back in France, Adrienne Monnier taught briefly at a private school, before enrolling on a shorthand and typing course.

On 15 November 1915, Adrienne Monnier opened her bookshop and lending library, "La Maison des Amis des Livres" at 7 rue de l'Odeon, Paris VI.

Adrienne Monnier was among the first women in France to found her own bookstore.

Nonetheless Adrienne Monnier, who had worked as a teacher and as a literary secretary, loved the world of literature and was determined to make bookselling her career.

Adrienne Monnier offered advice and encouragement to Sylvia Beach when Beach founded an English language bookstore called Shakespeare and Company in 1919.

Adrienne Monnier herself contributed under the pseudonym J-M Sollier, based on her mother's maiden name.

For ten years after the war Adrienne Monnier continued her work as an essayist, translator and bookseller.