Jack Kahane

Who was Jack Kahane?

Jack Kahane was a Manchester-born writer and publisher who founded the Obelisk Press in Paris in 1929.

He was the son of Selig and Susy Kahane, both Romanian-born immigrants. Kahane, a novelist, began the Obelisk Press after his publisher, Grant Richards, went bankrupt. Going into partnership with a printer, Kahane published his next novel Daffodil under his own imprint, and under one of several pseudonyms he used, Cecil Barr. A publisher of 'dbs', Kahane mixed serious work with smut in his list; he was able to take advantage of a legal loop-hole whereby books published in France in English were not subject to the censorship otherwise practised at the time, but were still subject to confiscation when importation was attempted.

The Obelisk Press published Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and other works which other publishers would not touch for fear of prosecution, among which Lady Chatterley's Lover and some of Joyce's works.

Jack Kahane was the father of Maurice Girodias, who created the Olympia Press.