Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney (31 October 1876 – 24 April 1972) was an American expatriate who lived, wrote, and ran a famous salon at 20 Rue Jacob in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. She was a poet, memoirist and epigrammatist, but believed her life was her true work of art. Barney was publicly lesbian, and worked to revive a literary history for women. She was especially interested in the poems of Sappho and tried to recreate a school of women poets like the one that Sappho had on Mytilene. Barney was also infamous for her many conquests in love (including the poet Renee Vivien, the dancer Liane de Pougy and the painter Romaine Brooks), and her commitment non-monogamy.

Further reading

• Wickes, George. The Amazon of Letters: The Life and Loves of

Natalie Barney. New York: Putnam, 1976.

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• Jean Chalon. Portrait of a Seductress: The World of Natalie Barney.
• Jay, Karla. The Amazon and the Page. Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1988.

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• Jay, Karla. The disciples of the tenth muse : Natalie Clifford Barney and Renee Vivien. 1984.
• Rodriguez, Suzanne. Wild Heart. A Life: Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey from Victorian America to the Literary Salons of Paris. HarperCollins, 2002.
• Edward Lorusso secured the first American publication of The One Who Is Legion (which was written in English)in 1987 through the National Poetry Foundation, University of Maine.