William Aspenwall Bradley

Background

William Aspenwall Bradley was born on February 8, 1878, in Hartford, Connecticut, United States. He was the son of William Edward Cleveland and Anna Maria (Aspenwall) Bradley.

Education

In 1899, Bradley received a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University, and a Master of Arts in 1900.

Career

After graduation, Bradley worked at the McClure Company as an art director and literary adviser until 1908. He then worked as a writer, contributing articles to American Magazine, the Boston Herald and the Delineator and as an editor for several books. He wrote a biography of William Cullen Bryant for the “English Men of Letters” series in 1905, French Etchers of the Second-Empire in 1916, two volumes of poetry in 1917, and another book on etchers of seventeenth-century Holland in 1918 - all revealing a wide range of interests.

Bradley’s list of books edited during this time are equally varied. He edited a collection of prayers by Samuel Johnson (1903), an anthology of garden poems (1910), The Man without a Country by Edward Everett Hale (1910), and The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet (1912). During the first World War, Bradley served as a captain for the U.S. Army in France. Serruys held regular literary salons, and Bradley began his career as a literary agent and translator. His translations include works by Remy de Gourmont, Marie Leneru, Rene Lalou, and Louis Hemon.

In 1929, Janet Flanner wrote an article titled “Letter front Paris” for the New Yorker; in the article she called Bradley the “leading agent and prophet here on transatlantic affairs” and provided Bradley’s list of French fiction for 1929. Julien Green’s Leviathan, Blaise Cendrar’s Little Negro Stories for White Children, Andre Chamson’s Les Homines de la Route and Massif Central, and Francois Mauriac’s La Chair et le Sang were among the books listed. One of Bradley’s last accomplishments was the 1938 translation of Paul Valery’s essays, Variety: Second Series.

Achievements

• American literary agent, editor, and author William Aspenwall Bradley was a pivotal figure to many well-known European and American writers. Known for his work with Arthur Miller, Anai's Nin, and Gertrude Stein, Bradley also represented Nathan Asch, Natalie Barney, Stephen Vincent Benet, Jouis Bromfield, Caresse Crosby, John Dos Passos, James T. Farrell, Ramon Guthrie, Bravig Imbs, Eugene Jolas, Ludwig Lewisohn, Claude McKay, Peter Neagoe, Katherine Anne Porter, Ezra Pound, Samuel Putnam, Robert Sage, William Seabrook, George Seldes, William L. Shirer, Glenway Wescott, Edith Wharton, and Thornton Wilder. In the 1920s and 1930s he was the most successful American literary agent in Paris. A passionate champion of French literature, the French government awarded him the French Legion of Honor for promoting French literature in the United States in 1926.
  
  Bradley was especially known for negotiating the sale of Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). Sold to Harcourt, Brace, this was Stein’s first financial success. Bradley also managed to persuade conservative Atlantic Monthly to publish excerpts from the book.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Decadence and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas

    (When, more than ten years ago, I wrote the first article ...)

    1921
  • William Cullen Bryant 1905
  • French Etchers of the Second Empire 1916
  • Garlands and Wayfarings 1917
  • Old Christmas, and Other Kentucky Tales in Verse 1917
  • Dutch Landscape Etchers of the Seventeenth Century 1918
  • The Story of Flamenca 1922
  • Singing Carr & Other Song-Ballads of the Cumberlands 1918
  • The Garden Muse; Poems for Garden Lovers 1910
  • Music of the Past 1924
  • Contemporary French literature 1924
  • Monsieur Ripois and Nemesis 1925
  • Variety: Second Series. 1938
  • The Prayers of Doctor Samuel Johnson 1903
  • The Garden Muse: Poems for Garden Lovers 1910
  • The Correspondence of Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet 1912

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• “Brasley is at all times a courteous and gracious muse, vivid, clear and sweet. She deems it by far a more attractive appearance to be dressed in a linen suit with exquisite trimmings than in the sinuous silk of her modern sisters, suggestive and alluring in every movement. No, in Garlands and wayfarings are the fruits of a ripe culture, a love of beauty and art for their own sake, an idyllic sensibility to nature and a classic sympathy with the spirit of life.”
  
  “Bradley’s willingness to champion the avant-garde at a time when American publishers were unappreciative of experimental writing and unwilling to take the financial risks of publishing it had a significant influence upon the shape of modern literature.”

Connections

In 1921, William Aspenwall Bradley married Jenny Serruys.

Father:

William Edward Cleveland Bradley

Mother:

Anna Maria (Aspenwall) Bradley

Spouse:

Jenny Serruys

References

• DLB 4: American Writers in Paris, 1920-1939 Called the Lost Generation, American writers who went to Paris after World War I were rebels against social and political conservatism in the United States.
  1980
• Published in Paris: American and British writers, printers, and publishers in Paris, 1920-1939
  1975
• The Flowers of Friendship: Letters Written to Gertrude Stein
  1953
• Always Merry And Bright: The Life of Henry Miller
  1978
• Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Company
  1974