Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes
Djuna Barnes, c. 1921
Djuna Barnes, c. 1921
BornJune 12, 1892
Storm King Mountain, Orange County, New York, U.S.
DiedJune 18, 1982(1982-06-18) (aged 90)
New York City, U.S.
Pen name
  • Lydia Steptoe
  • A Lady of Fashion
  • Gunga Duhl, the Pen Performer[1]
Occupation
  • Novelist
  • poet
  • journalist
  • artist
Literary movementModernism
Notable worksLadies Almanack (1928)
Nightwood (1936)

Djuna Barnes (/ˈnɑː/ JOO-nah; June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel Nightwood (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist literature.[2]

In 1913, Barnes began her career as a freelance journalist and illustrator for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.[3] By early 1914, Barnes was a highly sought feature reporter, interviewer, and illustrator whose work appeared in the city's leading newspapers and periodicals.[4] Later, Barnes's talent and connections with prominent Greenwich Village bohemians afforded her the opportunity to publish her prose, poems, illustrations, and one-act plays in both avant-garde literary journals and popular magazines, and publish an illustrated volume of poetry, The Book of Repulsive Women (1915).[4][5]

In 1921, a lucrative commission with McCall's took Barnes to Paris, where she lived for the next 10 years.[4] In this period she published A Book (1923), a collection of poetry, plays, and short stories, which was later reissued, with the addition of three stories, as A Night Among the Horses (1929), Ladies Almanack (1928), and Ryder (1928).[6]

During the 1930s, Barnes spent time in England, Paris, New York, and North Africa.[7] It was during this restless time that she wrote and published Nightwood. In October 1939, after nearly two decades living mostly in Europe, Barnes returned to New York.[8] She published her last major work, the verse play The Antiphon, in 1958, and she died in her apartment at Patchin Place, Greenwich Village in June 1982.[9][10]

  1. ^ Broe, 3.
  2. ^ Parsons, 165-6.
  3. ^ Herring, 66, 75.
  4. ^ a b c Parsons, 166.
  5. ^ Messerli, 3.
  6. ^ Messerli, 4-11.
  7. ^ Herring, xxv.
  8. ^ Herring, 247.
  9. ^ Messerli, 15.
  10. ^ Herring, 311.