| Status | Defunct |
|---|---|
| Predecessor | Editions Narcisse |
| Founded | 1927 |
| Founder | Harry Crosby Caresse Crosby |
| Defunct | 1970  |
| Country of origin | France |
| Headquarters location | Paris |
| Publication types | Books |
| Imprints | Crosby Continental Editions |
The Black Sun Press was an English-language press noted for publishing the early works of many modernist writers including Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene Jolas. It enjoyed the greatest longevity among the several expatriate presses founded in Paris during the 1920s, publishing nearly three times as many titles as did Edward Titus under his Black Manikin Press.[1] American expatriates living in Paris, Harry Crosby and his wife Caresse Crosby (American inventor of the modern bra) founded the press to publish their own work in April 1927 as Éditions Narcisse. They added to that in 1928 when they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe. They enjoyed the reception their initial work received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors, renaming the company the Black Sun Press, following on Harry's obsession on the symbolism of the sun.
They published exclusively limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. During the 1920s and 1930s Paris was at the crossroads of many emerging expatriate American writers, collectively called the Lost Generation. They published early works of a number of writers before they were well-known, including James Joyce's Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (later integrated into Finnegans Wake). They published Kay Boyle's first book-length work, Short Stories, in 1929. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. After Harry died in a suicide pact with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued the press' work into the 1940s.