“They paved the Atlantic with books”: William and Jenny Bradley, literary agents and cultural passeurs across borders

Abstract

The William A. Bradley Literary Agency Records help trace the careers of William and Jenny Bradley, two intermediaries in the cultural exchanges between France and the United States in the twentieth century. The archive offers privileged access to an array of transatlantic negotiations in the interwar period and post-Second World War era. This article first aims at including the two agents into the communications circuit relevant to book history that unfolds from writer to editor and on to reader, at a time when the book industry became more international. The article then unveils the sociability rooted in the agents’ participation in the world of Parisian salons and in the building of literary and intellectual relationships in the transnational space of Paris. Ultimately, the article argues that the Bradleys’ lifework articulates cultures in ways that defy the simplified vision of a unidirectional flux in what has been suggested to be an “American Century” of influence and cultural domination. In sum, an interest in intermediation and a transnational approach bring together considerations over the professional contributions of the French-American literary agents and observations about little-known makers of cultural processes. This article draws from the manuscript of Deux agents littéraires dans le siècle américain : William et Jenny Bradley, passeurs culturels transatlantiques (Cossu-Beaumont, 2023) and hopefully serves to shed light on the journeys of William and Jenny Bradley as Atlantic passeurs.