Djuna Barnes

-
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

Milestones

12 June 1892

DB was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.
Broe, Mary Lynn. “Introduction”. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 3-23.
3

June 1913

DB 's first articles as a freelance journalist began appearing in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle at around the time of her twenty-first birthday.
Herring, Phillip. Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. Penguin.
66, 75

October 1936

DB 's novel Nightwood was published in London by Faber and Faber .
Messerli, Douglas. Djuna Barnes: A Bibliography. David Lewis.
12
Field, Andrew. Djuna: The Formidable Miss Barnes. University of Texas.
212-3

18 June 1982

DB died in her apartment in Patchin Place, New York, after many years of poor health and chronic pain.
Field, Andrew. Djuna: The Formidable Miss Barnes. University of Texas.
243
Herring, Phillip. Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes. Penguin.
295ff, 311

October 1982

DB 's bestiary, Creatures in an Alphabet, was published by Dial a few months after her death.
Field, Andrew. Djuna: The Formidable Miss Barnes. University of Texas.
244
Broe, Mary Lynn. “Introduction”. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 3-23.
407

Biography

Birth, Background, Influences

12 June 1892

DB was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York.
Broe, Mary Lynn. “Introduction”. Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes, Southern Illinois University Press, pp. 3-23.
3