Djuna Barnes is known primarily for her poetic novel Nightwood, first published in England in 1936. Few works so intensely distill the anguish of the American abroad in Paris in the twenties and thirties, cut off from his native roots in a culture that has lost its own sense of history and tradition. Nightwood also appears to stand as an exceptional summation of the literary climate of the period, a high point in its formal and stylistic experimentation. Perhaps because of its singular reputation, many readers think of Barnes as a "one-book" novelist.

Her literary career, however, has been highly prismatic. She has been at various times a novelist and short story writer, a poet, a playwright, a journalist and theatrical columnist, as well as a portrait painter and illustrator of her own books. This diversity has given her work a unique quality in twentieth-century literature.

Once regarded as...