Djuna Barnes Summary

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was a major literary figure in Paris of the 1920s and 1930s, who retired into reclusiveness and produced only a small body of work.A major figure on the Paris literary scene o... Read more

Journalist, dramatist, novelist, poet, short-story writer, and, most of all, enigmatic figure, Djuna Barnes has protected her privacy for the last forty-five years. Indeed, Douglas Messerli says that ... Read more

Critical Essay by Robert L. Nadeau [Nightwood] has attracted a small circle of admirers who have been awed by Barnes's extraordinary ability to infuse macabre or grotesque subject matter with ... Read more

Critical Essay by T. S. Eliot One is liable to expect other people to see, on their first reading of a book, all that one has come to perceive in the course of a developing intimacy with it. I have r... Read more

Critical Essay by Mark Van Doren Mr. Eliot is right when he says of ["Nightwood"] that it is "really 'written'" [see excerpt above]. It is too consistently &... Read more

Critical Essay by John Hawkes Recently Time magazine, pernicious as ever, dismissed the Selected Writings of Djuna Barnes by saying that the best of her work, Nightwood, offered little more than �... Read more

Critical Essay by James B. Scott A Book, published in 1923, is a collection of twelve stories, three one-act plays, eleven poems, and a half-dozen pencil portraits…. A Night Among the Horses a... Read more

Critical Essay by Miriam Fuchs Whatever the techniques—traditional or experimental—Barnes's work is concerned with ways of being reconciled to life's random misfortunes. I... Read more

In the following essay, Giroux discusses his experience as an editor working with Djuna Barnes. "You have to trust someone, Miss Barnes. Why not trust me?" Only an author as aggravati... Read more

In the following review, Robins discusses what the drawings in Poe's Mother: Selected Drawings of Djuna Barnes, edited by Douglas Messerli, say about society during Barnes's era. What... Read more

In the following essay, Levine traces how Barnes's early journalism influenced her fiction, especially Nightwood. Judging by her early career as a journalist, one could say that Djuna Barnes... Read more

In the following essay, Nimeiri discusses the symbolic significance of the Americanness of the characters in Barnes's Nightwood. Since the American publication of Djuna Barnes's Night... Read more

In the following essay, Mailloux uses Barnes's correspondence to reconstruct a significant period in the writer's life. Djuna Barnes would seem in most ways to be an ideal subject for... Read more

In the following review, Dirda discusses Phillip Herring's Djuna: The Life and Work of Djuna Barnes and the reprinting of Barnes's Nightwood. As it happens, a friend of mine lives in ... Read more