Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias (12 April 1919 – 3 July 1990) was a French publisher who was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press. He spent most of his productive years in Paris.

Early life

Girodias was born Maurice Kahane in Paris, France, the son of Manchester-born Jack Kahane and a French heiress, Marcelle (née Girodias). His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. Girodias lived a relatively idyllic childhood, until the Depression forced his father to take up a new profession in Paris, namely publishing risqué books in English for the consumption of foreign tourists, who because of censorship could not obtain such materials at home. French censorship laws had a loophole allowing English works to be published without domestic confiscation.

Kahane's venture (Girodias later took his mother's birth name to hide his partially Jewish background from the Nazis) was called the Obelisk Press. It published notorious works by Frank Harris, Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin, as well as several pieces of light erotica written by Kahane himself.