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
Travel Anna Wickham
In an attempt to recover from her son's death, AW travelled to Paris, where she met Natalie Barney and other prominent literary figures.
Hepburn, James et al. “Anna Wickham: A Memoir”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, pp. 1-48.
21
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
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.
xxi
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...
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...
politics Anna Wickham
Although her feminist sympathies are evident in her poetry and in her friendships, AW seems to have had little formal involvement with the suffrage movement or other forms of organised feminism. She hosted occasional suffrage...
Textual Production Anna Wickham
Many of AW 's papers and letters—including most of Natalie Barney 's letters to her—were lost when Wickham's attic was destroyed by a fire-bomb in 1943.
Schenck, Celeste. “Anna Wickham”. The Gender of Modernism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Bonnie Kime Scott, Indiana University Press, pp. 613-17.
614
Hepburn, James et al. “Editor’s Note and Acknowledgements”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, p. xxv - xxvi.
xxvi
Hepburn, James et al. “Anna Wickham: A Memoir”. The Writings of Anna Wickham, Free Woman and Poet, edited by Reginald Donald Smith, Virago Press, pp. 1-48.
28
Some of her letters to Natalie Barney
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 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
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
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...
Textual Production Gertrude Stein
GS opens this text with the flat assertion that Alice B. Toklas did hers now anybody will do theirs.
Stein, Gertrude. Everybody’s Autobiography. Random House.
3
Once again, then, she purposely confused the boundaries of the self in autobiography.Because fame had...
Publishing Gertrude Stein
The consecutive volumes of the Yale Edition of Gertrude Stein's Unpublished Writings came out yearly thereafter. The second volume, Mrs. Reynolds, was published on 17 September 1952.
Wilson, Robert Alfred. Gertrude Stein: A Bibliography. Phoenix Bookshop.
59-60
Bee Time Vine came out on...
Literary responses Sappho
This inspired, among others, Amy Levy ,
Gubar, Susan. “Multiple personality”. Women’s Review of Books, Vol.
xviii
, No. 12, pp. 13-14.
13
Michael Field , Natalie Barney , Renée Vivien , and Colette .
Residence Ezra Pound
EP lived in Paris, where he formed associations with many other expatriate writers including Gertrude Stein , Ernest Hemingway , and Natalie Barney .
Nadel, Ira Bruce, editor. “Chronology; Introduction”. The Cambridge Companion to Ezra Pound, Cambridge University Press, pp. xvii - xxxi; 1.
xxi-xxii
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
4
Literary responses Hope Mirrlees
Julia Briggs reads the text as a roman à clef in which Scudéry is an unflattering portrait of Natalie Barney (whom HM would have encountered when herself living in Paris) while Harrison appears as the...
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

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. 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.