Djuna Barnes

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Standard Name: Barnes, Djuna
Birth Name: Djuna Barnes
Pseudonym: Lydia Steptoe
Pseudonym: A Lady of Fashion
Pseudonym: Gunga Duhl, the Pen Performer
Best-known for her novel Nightwood, 1936, about her fellow Americans in Paris, DB wrote in a number of other genres: plays, short stories, poetry, and journalism. Other works like the Ladies Almanack defy generic categorisation. Her writing is heavily if not cryptically autobiographical. Her works frequently appeared with her own illustrations. She based many of her characters on her family, ex-lovers, and acquaintances. Critic Mary Lynn Broe writes: Most of Barnes' major writings—the short stories in Spillway, the novel Ryder, but particularly the heavily excised twenty-nine drafts of The Antiphon—encode the sexual violations and erotic entanglements in the patriarchal family.
Broe, Mary Lynn. “Introduction”. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 3-23.
4
Black and white photograph of Djuna Barnes, shown from the waist up, with her head turned slightly and one hand on her hip. She is wearing a polka-dotted blouse under a black jacket, large pearl earrings, dark lipstick, and a black hat with a ribbon around it and a narrow brim.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Flannery O'Connor
In summer 1945 Mary Flannery O'Connor graduated from Georgia College (describing it in the yearbook as [t]he usual bunk).
Gooch, Brad. Flannery. Little, Brown and Co.
116
She applied to two universities, and the University of Iowa offered her a scholarship...
Family and Intimate relationships Bryher
Though emotionally empty, the marriage was artistically productive. Most significantly, Bryher's introductions and family funds allowed McAlmon to establish his influential press, Contact Editions . Thus, Bryher's money and social connections enabled the publication of...
Fictionalization Natalie Clifford Barney
NCB has been a magnet for biographers (recently as the subject with Romaine Brooks of Diana Souhami 's Wild Girls in 2004 and as a minor character in Joan Schenkar 's Truly Wilde: the Unsettling...
Friends, Associates Antonia White
In Chelsea AW formed a friendship with the painter Eliot Seabrooke , a large and centred personality
Dunn, Jane. Antonia White: A Life. Jonathan Cape.
72
who supplied an oasis of sanity in her life and helped her to sort out her opinions...
Friends, Associates Sylvia Beach
Among the first subscribers were Thérèse Bertrand (later Fontaine) , André Gide , Dorothy and Ezra Pound , and Gertrude Stein .
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
22, 26-7
With the loyal support of French literary figures such as Valery Larbaud
Friends, Associates Anna Wickham
In ParisAW also met Sylvia Beach and Djuna Barnes , among others.
Hepburn, James, and Anna Wickham. “Preface”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith and Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, p. xix - xxiii.
xxii
A brief encounter with Ezra Pound inspired the poem Song to Amidon.
Wickham, Anna. “Introduction”. Selected Poems, edited by David Garnett, Chatto and Windus, pp. 7-11.
10
Wickham also had a long-lasting friendship with Nina Hamnett .
Friends, Associates Mary Butts
In Paris in the 1920s MB engaged with other modernist writers and literary people, including James Joyce , Djuna Barnes , Robert McAlmon , Ford Madox Ford , Bryher , Peggy Guggenheim , Ethel Colburn Mayne
Friends, Associates Mina Loy
In Greenwich Village, ML met Margaret Anderson , Jane Heap , and Djuna Barnes .
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
288, 295
Friends, Associates Mina Loy
ML was now at the centre of the Parisian expatriate literary community, and she renewed her friendships with Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes .
Burke, Carolyn. Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
328
In 1927 she spoke at Natalie Barney 's Académie des Femmes
Friends, Associates Lady Ottoline Morrell
LOM continued to entertain in London, hosting such guests as Ethel Smyth , Elizabeth Bowen , Stephen Spender , Max Beerbohm , Hope Mirrlees , Djuna Barnes , Charlie Chaplin , the novelist Henry Green
Friends, Associates Willa Muir
While living in Cambridge, USA, the Muirs socialized with notable literary figures such as Archibald MacLeish , Robert Frost , Richard Wilbur , and Robert Lowell .
Muir, Willa. Belonging. Hogarth Press.
288, 290-1, 302
When WM saw T. S. Eliot
Friends, Associates Gertrude Stein
Over the years, the old crowd had begun to disperse and the Saturday evening salons were frequented more by writers and less by artists. Although GS had published only a few volumes and had often...
Friends, Associates Harriet Shaw Weaver
McAlmon hosted a dinner party which Weaver attended together with Djuna Barnes , William Bird , sculptor Thelma Wood , and Ezra Pound , who mortified her by teasing her, quite without justification, about her...
Intertextuality and Influence Brigid Brophy
One of the twelve sections is no more fifty words. The novel's decadent style inhabits the minds of several characters, particularly that of the tall, fragile, perpetually exhausted but secretly sexually voracious Antonia Mount. Her...
Intertextuality and Influence Anna Wickham
Some of the most interesting poems first published in this collection are the playful or satirical responses to other writers. To Men answers a poem of the same title by Ella Wheeler Wilcox , whose...

Timeline

26 July 1915: The first issue of Bruno's Weekly, edited...

Writing climate item

26 July 1915

The first issue of Bruno's Weekly, edited by Guido Bruno , was published in New York.

Texts

Barnes, Djuna. A Book. Boni and Liveright, 1923.
Barnes, Djuna. A Night Among the Horses. Horace Liveright, 1929.
Eliot, T. S., and Djuna Barnes. “Introduction”. Nightwood, Faber and Faber, 1950.
Lanser, Susan Sniader, and Djuna Barnes. “Introduction”. Ladies Almanack, New York University Press, 1992, p. xv - li.
Barnes, Djuna. Ladies Almanack. Darantière, 1928.
Barnes, Djuna, and Susan Sniader Lanser. Ladies Almanack. New York University Press, 1992.
Barnes, Djuna, and Douglas Messerli. New York. Editor Barry, Alyce, Sun and Moon, 1989.
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. Faber and Faber, 1936.
Barnes, Djuna. Ryder. Horace Liveright, 1928.
Barnes, Djuna. The Antiphon. Faber and Faber, 1958.
Barnes, Djuna. The Book of Repulsive Women. Guido Bruno, 1915.