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.

Works

Works in French

• Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes (Paris: Ollendorf, 1900) French love poems
• Cing Petits Dialogues Grecs (Paris: La Plume, 1901); published under the pseudonym "Tryphe"
• Actes et entr'actes (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
• Je me souviens (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
• Èparpillements (Paris: Sansot, 1910)
• Poems & Poemes: Autres Alliances (Paris: Emile Paul, New York: Doran, 1920) -- a French-English collection of verse
• Pensees d'une Amazone (Paris: Emile Paul, 1920)
• Aventures de l'Esprit (Paris: Emile Paul, 1929)
• Nouvelles Pensees de l'Amazone (Paris: Mercure de France, 1939)
• Souvenirs Indiscrets (Paris: Flammarion, 1960)
• Traits et Portraits (Paris: Mercure de France, 1963)

Available in English translation

• A Perilous Advantage: The Best of Natalie Clifford Barney. edited by Anna Livia. New Victoria Publishers, 1992.
• Barney, Natalie Clifford. Adventures of the Mind (The Cutting Edge: Lesbian Life and Literature). John Spalding Gatton (Translator), Natalie Spalding Gatton (Translator). New York University Press; December 1992.