The Europa Press was a publishing house founded and run by the Irish surrealist poet George Reavey

George Reavey

George Reavey was a Russian-born Irish surrealist poet, publisher, translator and art collector. He was also Samuel Beckett's first literary agent. In addition to his own poetry, Reavey's translations and critical prose helped introduce 20th century Russian poetry to an English-speaking audience...

. The press was based in Paris from its inception in 1932 until 1935, when Reavey moved to London. It ceased operation in 1939.

The Europa Press is important in the history of 20th century Irish poetry

Irish poetry

The history of Irish poetry includes the poetries of two languages, one in Irish and the other in English. The complex interplay between these two traditions, and between both of them and other poetries in English, has produced a body of work that is both rich in variety and difficult to...

 because it published early work by Reavey, Brian Coffey

Brian Coffey

Brian Coffey was an Irish poet and publisher. His work was informed by his Catholicism and by his background in science and philosophy, and his connection to surrealism. For these reasons, he is seen as being closer to an intellectual European Catholic tradition than to mainstream Irish Catholic...

, Denis Devlin

Denis Devlin

Denis Devlin was, along with Samuel Beckett and Brian Coffey, one of the generation of Irish modernist poets to emerge at the end of the 1920s. He was also a career diplomat.-Early life and studies:...

 and Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

 and in a wider context of literary and surrealist history because it published the first ever collection of English language versions of work by Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

. This was published to coincide with the opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 and featured a drawing by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

 and a preface by Herbert Read

Herbert Read

Sir Herbert Edward Read, DSO, MC was an English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. He was one of the earliest English writers to take notice of existentialism, and was strongly influenced by proto-existentialist thinker Max Stirner....

, and the translators included Reavey, Beckett, Devlin, David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

, Man Ray

Man Ray

Man Ray , born Emmanuel Radnitzky, was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal...

 and Ruthven Todd

Ruthven Todd

Ruthven Campbell Todd was a Scottish poet, artist and novelist, best known as an editor of the works of William Blake. He wrote also under the pseudonym R. T. Campbell.-Background:...

.

Complete list of Europa Press books

1. Reavey, George. Faust's Metamorphoses. (1932) (in association with The New Review).
2. Reavey, George. Nostradam. (1935).
3. Reavey, George. Signes d'Adieu. (1935).
4. Beckett, Samuel. Echo's Bones and Other Precipitates. (1935).
5. Eluard, Paul. Thorns of Thunder. (1936).
6. Devlin, Denis. Intercessions. (1937).
7. Ford, Charles Henry
   Charles Henri Ford
   Charles Henri Ford was an American poet, novelist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View in New York City, and as the partner of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew...
   
   . The Garden of Disorder. (1938)
8. Coffey, Brian. Third Person. (1938)
9. Reavey, George. Quixotic Perquisitions. (1939).