Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes (June 12, 1892 - June 18, 1982) played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing by women and was one of the key figures in 1920s and 30s bohemian Paris.

Nightwood

Barnes left Paris in 1931, when her relationship with Wood ended, and lived for a time in both London and New York. She gave up drinking, smoking, drugs and intimate relationships in order to focus exclusively on her writing. Her reputation as a writer was made when her novel Nightwood was published in 1936 by Faber and Faber in an expensive edition with Eliot's introduction almost guaranteeing a favourable reception.

Related Topics:
1931 - London - 1936 - Faber and Faber

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The novel, set in Paris in the 1920s, centers around the lives of five characters, two of whom are based on Barnes and Wood, and reflects the circumstances surrounding the ending of their real-life love affair. In his introduction, Eliot praises Barnes' style, which while having 'prose rhythm that is prose style, and the musical pattern which is not that of verse', 'is so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it.'

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