Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes was born in a log cabin in New York State on June 12, 1892. She was the second child of Wald and Elizabeth Barnes. Wald Barnes believed in polygamy, and so he brought his mistress, Fanny Clark, to live with the family. Wald was a failed composer and artist, so his mother, Zadel Barnes, kept the growing family financially afloat. When Djuna Barnes was 18, her father and grandmother pressured her into marrying Fanny Clark’s brother, Percy Faulkner, who was 52 at the time. The marriage was extremely short-lived (it lasted no more than two months by many accounts) and Barnes moved to New York City with her mother and three brothers in 1912, after Wald and Elizabeth divorced. Barnes briefly studied art at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League of New York, but eventually took a job as a reporter for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Barnes quickly gained a following for her unusual articles and willingness to go into traditionally male spaces for a story (such as diving into the world of boxing). In 1921, Barnes went to Paris on an assignment and made it her home for the next few years. Barnes was a fixture on the Left Bank, which was also home to notable writers like Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway. While there, Barnes met Thelma Wood (a sculptor from Kansas) and by 1922 the two were in love and living together in Paris. Barnes continued writing articles for newspapers until 1928, when she began writing novels. Her first novel, Ryder, proved a success when it was published in 1928. That same year, Barnes and Wood broke up. Over the next few years, Barnes moved around, eventually moving into Peggy Guggenheim’s English manor. This is where she wrote the semi-autobiographical Nightwood. Barnes also developed a drinking habit that culminated in a suicide attempt in 1939. Guggenheim sent Barnes back to Barnes’ mother in New York, and her mother sent Barnes to a sanatorium to get sober. Barnes then moved into her own apartment in Greenwich Village where she struggled to earn a living. Barnes wrote The Antiphon (a scathing criticism of her family thinly veiled as a tragedy in verse) in 1958 as well as a few poems, but she didn’t publish any more fiction after that. Barnes became a notorious recluse and rarely left her apartment until her death. She was voted into the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1961 and given a senior fellowship in the National Endowment for the Arts in 1981. Barnes died in her apartment six days after her 90th birthday in 1982.