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Their Life with T.S. Eliot, Proust, Joyce and the Excruciatingly Irascible Wyndham Lewis
by Stephen Klaidman
"I write primarily to pay homage to a beloved friend, but also in the hope that some future chronicler of the history of art and letters in our time may give to Sydney and Violet Schiff the place which is their due." - T. S. Eliot, in a letter appended to Violet Schiff's obituary, Times of London, July 9, 1962
Largely forgotten today, Sydney and Violet Schiff were ubiquitous, almost Zelig-like figures in the most important literary movement of the twentieth century. Their friendships among the elite of the Modernist writers were remarkable, and their extensive correspondence with T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Proust, and many others strongly suggests both intimacy and intellectual equality. Leading critics of the day considered Sydney, writing as Stephen Hudson, to be in the same literary league as Joyce, Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. As for Violet, she was a talented musician who nurtured Sydney's literary efforts and was among the first in England to recognize Proust's genius and spread the word.
Sydney and Violet tells the story of how the Schiffs, despite their commercial and Jewish origins, won acceptance in the snobbish, anti-Semitic, literary world of early twentieth-century England, and brings to life a full panoply of extravagant personalities: Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Mansfield, Wyndham Lewis, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and many more. A highly personal, anecdote-filled account of the social and intellectual history of the Modernist movement, Sydney and Violet also examines what divides the literary survivors from the victims of taste and time.
"In this delightful book, which draws on extensive private correspondence, interviews, and personal friendship, journalist and editor Klaidman...invites us to share the Schiffs's privileged view of the modernist elite who reshaped literature, art, and music in the early 20th century " - Publishers Weekly
"The world of Arts and Letters is often enriched by the lives of those who did not create lasting work of their own but who helped to make it possible for the legendary figures of their time to do so, and Sydney and Violet Schiff were just such a couple. To read about their adventures is to be transported back to the magical and mythical early years of Modernism and to appreciate the role this incredible pair played in bringing it about. They encouraged their friends in their creative pursuits, as they did T. S. Eliot during the grim years of his first marriage, and tolerated the outrageous behavior of their circle's more difficult members, chief among them Wyndham Lewis. Stephen Klaidman has finally given the Schiffs their just due." - Deirdre Bair, author of Saul Steinberg and Samuel Beckett, winner of the National Book Award
"Reading Sydney and Violet is like visiting a newly opened gallery devoted to portraits of the Modernists. Sometimes it is a rogue's gallery, to be sure, but accompanied by the clear-sighted and always informative Stephen Klaidman, we can savor the delicious morsels (gossipy and otherwise), regret the less than ideal or downright bad behavior of the great or merely famous, and rejoice in meeting two fascinating people who lived at the center of the major cultural movements of the early twentieth century." - Mary Gordon, author of The Love of My Youth and Final Payments
"Sidney and Violet is a delightful way of discovering the rivalries and excesses, the nastiness and the brilliance of the early-twentieth-century English literary world. For forty years, Sydney and Violet Schiff befriended and encouraged the best artists of their time, and Stephen Klaidman's very entertaining book takes us through their life together with wonderful anecdotes. On one evening in Paris, the Schiffs gathered Proust, Joyce, Stravinsky and Picasso around the same table at the Majestic, all of whom rebuffed any attempt at civil conversation. It is a tribute to the genius of the Schiffs that they survived the ordeal and remained friends with such a raucous group of intellectual luminaries." - Anka Muhlstein, author of Monsieur Proust's Library
This information about Sydney and Violet was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Stephen Klaidman was an editor and reporter for twenty-three years at The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the International Herald Tribune. He has also taught widely at institutions such as Georgetown University's Law Center and its School of Foreign Service, Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, and Pennsylvania State University. For ten years he also worked at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics and Institute for Health Policy Analysis.
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