Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Natalie Clifford Barney
-
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.
In this text Minnie and her family return somewhat changed. While all of Minnie's relatives have taken male lovers (all named John, perhaps in honour of the name by which Radclyffe Hall
liked to be...
Textual Production
Anna Livia
In 1992, Anna Livia
edited and translated the collection A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. In 1995, she did the same with Lucie Delarue-Mardrus
's novel The Angel and the Perverts...
Textual Production
Anna Livia
Anna Livia contributed entries on Natalie Barney
and Elana Dykewomon
to The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (1994), as well as entries for Bonnie Zimmerman
's Lesbian Histories and Cultures: An Encyclopedia (2000) on Natalie Barney
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...
Structured as a monthly chronicle, Ladies Almanack is a satiric lesbian cosmology based on Natalie Barney
and her circle in Paris. Among its characters are Patience Scalpel, based on Mina Loy
, Lady Buck-and-Balk and...
Beach, Sylvia. Shakespeare and Company. Harcourt, Brace.
22, 26-7
With the loyal support of French literary figures such as Valery Larbaud
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
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.
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
The Well of Loneliness contains elements of the roman à clef. Two of its characters, Valérie Seymour and Jonathan Brockett, are based on Natalie Barney
and Noël Coward
.
Cline, Sally. Radclyffe Hall: A Woman Called John. John Murray.
83, 269
The Breakspeare Unit draws...
Timeline
No timeline events available.
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, 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. 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.