Djuna Barnes born - June 12, 1892

On this day in 1892, writer and illustrator Djuna Barnes was born.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. A quick content warning before we start the
show today, this episode contains mention of sexual abuse. Hey y'all,
I'm Eves and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a podcast that brings a little bit of the past
to the present. Every day Today is June. The day

(00:28):
was June. Writer and illustrator Juna Barnes was born in
Cornwall on Hudson, New York. Barnes is best known for
writing the modernist novel Nightwood. Barnes's grandmother, Saddle, had a
big influence on her. Saddle was also a writer, and
she advocated causes like spiritualism and the philosophy of free love.

(00:52):
There is some indication that Barnes may have faced sexual
abuse and incests through her family relationships, and these themes
show up in her work work, but Junah never confirmed this. However,
her family did encourage her to marry Percy Faulkner, a
fifty two year old, when she was around eighteen. They
only stayed together for a few months. Barnes began writing

(01:14):
at an early age to support her mother and brothers.
She studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League
of New York for a while, and she worked as
a freelancer, writing for magazines and newspapers like the Brooklyn
Daily Eagle, the New York Press, New York World Magazine,
and New York Morning Telegraph. A lot of her work
was so called stunt journalism that was subjective. For instance,

(01:37):
in nineteen fourteen, she opted to be force fit to
experience what suffragists on hunger strikes were going through. In
addition to her journalism, Barnes was also writing poems, short
stories in one act plays, as well as creating drawings
that were being published in small press magazines. In nineteen fifteen,
her chat book called The Book of Repulsive Women, Eight

(02:00):
Rhythms and Five Drawings was published. The chat book contained
lesbian imagery at a time when writing was being censored
for sexual content, but the collection avoided censorship as censors
and some readers did not always understand the references in
the work. Barnes got some recognition for three one act
plays that were produced by a collective called the Province

(02:22):
Town Players in nineteen nineteen and nineteen twenty. Barnes moved
to Paris in the nineteen twenties, joining artists and writer
circles in the city's Left Bank. In nineteen twenty two,
she interviewed writer James Joyce for Vanity Fair, and in
nineteen three she published a collection of poetry, plays and
stories called A Book. Writer. Barnes's first novel was published

(02:46):
in ninety eight. The chapters in the book are written
in different styles, and it's believed to be somewhat autobiographical.
It contained themes of sexuality and polygamy, and it was
censored when it was published. When Barnes and her editor
were told to get rid of some of the texts
and drawings in the book, Barnes called for asterisk to
replace the censor parts so that there was quote matter

(03:09):
for no speculation, where since continuity and beauty have been damaged,
as she put it in the foreword to the book.
Her second novel, Nightwood, was published in ninety six. It's
considered one of the most influential novels of the modernist period.
It follows the love affairs of a woman named Robin
Vote in Paris, and it was noted for explicitly portraying

(03:32):
lesbian relationships. It contained moments of humor and moments of tragedy,
and it too had to be edited because of concerns
about censorship. The book got good reviews, but it didn't
sell that well. After Nightwood was published, Barnes dealt with depression, alcoholism,
and illness. She stopped writing and returned to New York

(03:53):
City for the rest of her life. She lived in
an apartment in Greenwich Village. During these years, Barnes became
somewhat reclusive. Her verse play The Antiphon was first published
in nine and it drew on her own family relationships,
and her collection of poetry, Creatures in an Alphabet was
published in two Larnes wrote mostly poetry in the last

(04:17):
two decades of her life, but she didn't publish as
much as you did previously. She died in nineteen eighty two.
Some of her early works were reprinted after her death,
and her writing has received renewed interest. I'm Eve chef
Cote and hopefully you know a little more about history
today than you did yesterday. And you can hit us

(04:38):
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Thanks again for listening. To the show and we'll see
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(05:03):
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