Natalie Clifford Barney

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Standard Name: Barney, Natalie Clifford
Birth Name: Natalie Clifford Barney
Nickname: l'Amazone
Nickname: l'imperatrice des lesbiennes
Pseudonym: Florence Temple-Bradford
Pseudonym: Tryphê
Used Form: Tryphe
Natalie Clifford Barney , though American, is best known as a Paris salonnière. She specialized in memoirs and pensées, though she also produced poetry, drama, novels, essays, and dialogues. Writing primarily in French but also sometimes in English, she appropriated the epigrammatic tradition of Pascal , La Rochefoucauld , and Wilde for a female subject matter.
Benstock, Shari. Women of the Left Bank: Paris, 1900-1940. University of Texas Press.
295
Much of her work celebrates sapphic love from a frankly autobiographical perspective. Her numerous sketches of writers and intellectuals, along with her fictionalized appearances in several works by others, attest to her prominent role in creating and extending Modernist literary networks.
Half-length painting of Natalie Clifford Barney by her mother, Alice Pike Barney, 1896. She faces the viewer directly: blonde, blue-eyed, wearing a black dress, fur cape, and blue velvet hat with a tall feather. Her hair, divided in the centre, is roughly brushed back.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Colette
Born into the French upper class and married into fashionable circles, Colette became notorious for her promiscuity. She had well-publicized affairs with both men and women, including the eccentric, aristocratic, cross-dressing music-hall performer Mathilde de Mornay, marquise de Belboeuf
Education Dorothy Bussy
Marie Souvestre was a free-thinking feminist, daughter of the French author and philosopher Emile Souvestre . Her school, Les Ruches, was widely admired for its academic rigour. It educated many outstanding women, including Beatrice Chamberlain
Family and Intimate relationships Anna Wickham
After their first meeting in Paris, AW and Natalie Barney became friends, and they corresponded between 1926 and 1937. AW wrote a series of Post-card Poems enclosed in letters declaring her passionate love for Barney...
Friends, Associates Radclyffe Hall
During the 1920s, RH and Una Troubridge were friends with a wide range of writers, actors, and artists, including Ida Wylie , Romaine Brooks , Natalie Barney , Noël Coward , Tallulah Bankhead , and...
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 Edna St Vincent Millay
ESVM was invited to tea at the Paris salon of Natalie Barney ; Lucie Delarue-Mardrus told her that she owed it to her own gloire to attend.
Milford, Nancy. Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Random House.
361-2
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 Djuna Barnes
DB arrived in Paris with letters of introduction to Ezra Pound and James Joyce , and she soon came into contact with a great number of the US expatriates living there at this time, including...
Friends, Associates Una Troubridge
The couple's circle of friends included many notable women: painter Romaine Brooks , writers Natalie Barney , Violet Hunt , and Iris Tree (daughter of actor Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree), the Duchess Clermont Tonnerre ...
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 Una Troubridge
In the wake of Hall's death, UT found some strength from her friendships with women, such as the writers Colette and Natalie Barney .
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray.
373-4
Friends, Associates Anna Wickham
AW 's vibrant personality attracted many friends, several of whom were writers and artists. By all accounts, she was an extraordinarily vital and charismatic woman. David Garnett describes her as a a very handsome, big...
Friends, Associates Colette
Colette knew all the literary and intellectual world of Paris, including André Gide , Maurice Ravel , and Jean Cocteau . Martha Gellhorn was known to her as Marty.
Castle, Terry. “Yes you, sweetheart”. London Review of Books, pp. 3-8.
5
Colette,. Lettres à Sa Fille, 1916-1953. Editor Jouvenel, Anne de, Gallimard.
527
Natalie Barney shared...
Leisure and Society Leonora Carrington
The street in which LC and Ernst lived was also occupied by such authors as Gertrude Stein and Natalie Barney at various times in the early twentieth century.
Leisure and Society Violet Trefusis
In Paris, Trefusis attended Natalie Barney 's salon only once, preferring to host her own, which was attended by Paul Morand , Jean Giraudoux , and a number of diplomats.
Jullian, Philippe et al. Violet Trefusis: Life and Letters. Hamish Hamilton.
72, 87

Timeline

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Texts

Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Karla Jay. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. Translator Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers, 1992.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Actes et entr’actes. Sansot, 1910.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Aventures de l’esprit. Émile-Paul Frères, 1929.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Cinq petits dialogues grecs. La Plume, 1902.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Éparpillements. Sansot, 1910.
Barney, Natalie Clifford, and Gertrude Stein. “Foreword”. As Fine as Melanctha, Yale University Press, 1954, p. vii - xix.
Jay, Karla, and Natalie Clifford Barney. “Introduction”. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney, translated by. Anna Livia and Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers, 1992, p. i - xiv.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Je me souviens. Sansot, 1910.
Chalon, Jean, and Natalie Clifford Barney. “Note”. Un panier de framboises, Mercure de France, 1979, pp. 41-3.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Nouvelles pensées de l’Amazone. Mercure de France, 1939.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Pensées d’une Amazone. Émile Paul, 1920.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Poems & poèmes. Émile-Paul Frères and George H. Doran, 1920.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Quelques portraits-sonnets de femmes. Ollendorf, 1900.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Souvenirs indiscrets. Flammarion, 1960.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. The One Who Is Legion, or A. D.’s After-Life. Eric Partridge, 1930.
Jay, Karla et al. “The Trouble with Heroines: Natalie Clifford Barney and Anti-Semitism”. A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney, translated by. Anna Livia, New Victoria Publishers, 1992, pp. 181-98.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Traits et portraits, suivi de L’amour défendu. Mercure de France, 1963.
Barney, Natalie Clifford. Un panier de framboises. Mercure de France, 1979.