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Djuna Barnes

The Knitting Circle: Literature

Biography,work,bibliography.

U.S. journalist, arthor, illustrator, and playwright

Her mother was the English woman Elizabeth Chappell. Her father was the unsuccessful American writer Wald Barnes.

Djuna Barnes moved to New York City and attended the Pratt Institute (1911-1912) and studied with the Art Students League (1915).

She began her career as a reporter and illustrator for magazines, under pseudonyms such as Lydia Steptoe, and Gunga Duhl the Pen Performer.

She then became a writer of one-act plays and short stories.

She wrote three experimental playsThree from the Earth,An Irish Triangle, andKurzy and the Seawhich were produced in 1919-20 by the Provincetown Players.

In 1920 she moved to Paris where she lived for most of the decade with her lover, the sculptor and silverpoint artist, Thelma Wood. Djuna Barnes was a member of the influential coterie of mostly lesbian women that included Natalie Barney andJanet Flanner.

After a break with Thelma Wood, Djuna Barnes went to England in 1931. She stayed at Peggy Guggenheim's rented country manor, Hayford Hall, along with writers Emily Coleman and Antonia White, and critic John Ferrar Holms. It was here that she wrote he best known workNightwood, (1936).

Djuna Barnes returned to New York in 1939 where she lived chronically ill and relatively poor.

Bertha Harris regarded Djuna Barnes's work as "e;practically the only available espression of lesbian culture we have in the modern western world"e; sinceSappho.

HerNightwoodwas number 12 of thelist of the top 100 gay bookscompiled in the USA in 1999.

• Three from the Earth, 1919-20, an experimental play.

• An Irish Triangle, 1919-20, an experimental play.

• Kurzy and the Sea, 1919-20, an experimental play.

• Ryder, 1928, semi-autobiography.

• Ladies Almanack, 1928, a witty chronicle of the most celebrated Parisiennes of the era. The characters Nip and Tuck representJanet Flannerand Solita Solano.
  An extract is reproduced inThe Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories.

• Nightwood, 1936, a novel (with an introduction by T. S. Elliot).
  1963, Faber, 239 pages, ISBN 0571056644,SBU Library Main Bookstock 813.52

• The Antiphon, 1958, a verse play.

• Smoke and Other Early Stories, published posthumously in 1983.

• Interviews, published posthumously in 1985, a collection of newspaper and magazine conversations.

• Djuna Barnes' New York, 1990, Virago, 360 pages, ISBN 1853811092.

• Collected Stories of Djuna Barnes, 1996, Sun and Moon Press, ISBN 1557132267.

• Selected Works of Djuna Barnes: Spillway; The Antiphon; Nightwood, 1980, London: Faber & Faber, 366 pages, ISBN 057115799 (hardcover).
  1998, London: Faber, 366 pages, ISBN 0571193919,SBU Library Main Bookstock 813.52.
  1998,SBU Library.

• Selected Works of Djuna Barnes, 1998, London: Faber & Faber, 384 pages, ISBN 0571193919 (paperback).

  First appeared in 1962.

  A short review by Colin Spencer inGay Times, January, 1999, issue 244. page 72. "e;. . . includesSpillway, a collection of short stories;The Antiphon, a play in Jacobean blank verse, and the classic and magical novel,Nightwood."e; "e;Nightwoodis one of the great novels of the century, painful, poetic and powerful. Based on a real ménage à trois of three women (one was Peggy Guggenheim, who is also one of the dedicatees) with, as observer and commentator of the tragedy, a loquacious camp Irish doctor (who also existed in the flesh in the Paris of the 20s) who speaks as one possessed by lyrics on a public bog door. If you have never discovered this novel, read it at once."e;

• Mary Lynn Broe, (editor), (1991), "e;Silence and Power: A Reevaluation of Djuna Barnes"e;.

• Andrew Field, (1973),"e;The Formidable Miss Barnes"e;.

• Andrew Field, (1983),"e;Djuna: The Life and Times of Djuna Barnes"e;, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

• Phillip Herring, (1995), "e;The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes"e;, Viking Books, 16 pages, ISBN 0670849693.

• Jackson Mac Low, (1996), "e;Barnesbook: Four Poems Derived from Sentences by Djuna Barnes"e;, Sun and Moon Press, ISBN 1557132356.

• Monique Wittig, (1992), "e;The Straight Mind and Other Essays"e;, Boston: Beacon.

Biography,work,bibliography.

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The Knitting Circle

First uploaded 31st. December, 1998

Last updated 21st. August, 2003