Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Djuna Barnes
-
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.
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...
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...
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
.
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...
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...
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...