Between 1927 and 1934 Edgar (Ned) Calmer served as a reporter first for the Paris Tribune (the European edition of the Chicago Tribune) and later for the Paris Herald (the European edition of the New York Herald). He traveled widely in Europe as a foreign correspondent from 1928 to 1934, but Paris remained his actual and spiritual focal point. In Paris during the late twenties and early thirties Calmer wrote his first novel, Beyond the Street (1934), published several short prose pieces and poems in transition, and moved in the company of many notable writers, including Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway. His later novel, All the Summer Days (1961), is a fictionalized account of his experiences working for the Paris Tribune and living at the Hotel de Lisbonne, the Latin Quarter residence of nearly half the paper's staff.

Calmer was born in Chicago to Henry Edgar and May Regan Calmer and spent his childhood...