Nightwood is not only a classic of lesbian literature, but was also acknowledged by no less than T. S. Eliot as one of the great novels of the 20th century. Eliot admired Djuna Barnes' rich, evocative language. Lesbian readers will admire the exquisite craftsmanship and Barnes' penetrating insights into obsessive passion. Barnes told a friend that Nightwood was written with her own blood "while it was still running." That flowing wound was the breakup of an eight-year relationship with the lesbian love of her life.


Review
The Modern Library of the World's Best Books

"Djuna Barnes understood obsession, particularly erotic obsession. . . . Nothing is minimal in [Nightwood]. Passion rules. Anyone who has gone out of his or her way to walk past a lost lover's house, who has called the phone number only to hang up when the receiver clicks hollowly--that person knows the shameful secret that Djuna Barnes treats in such vivid detail. What we have lost sometimes defines us. . . . To have been madly and disastrously in love is a kind of glory that can only be made intelligible in a sublime poetry--the revelatory and layered poetry of Djuna Barnes's masterpiece, Nightwood."

--from Dorothy Allison's Introduction

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The version of "Nightwood" published in 1936 and revered ever since both as a classic modernist work and a groundbreaking lesbian novel differs in many respects from the book Djuna Barnes actually wrote. Unable to find a publisher for her earlier, more explicit versions, Barnes allowed her friend Emily Coleman and her editor T. S. Eliot to cut much material—ranging from a word to passages three pages long—to create a book 'suitable' for publication. Barnes scholar Cheryl J. Plumb has studied all surviving versions of the work to re-create the novel Barnes originally intended. The Dalkey Archive edition not only restores to the main text the material Barnes reluctantly allowed to be cut, but also reproduces in facsimile the 70 pages of discarded drafts that survive of earlier versions. The restored text and related drafts are accompanied by an introduction tracing the novel's composition. "Nightwood" is the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys: her husband 'Baron' Felix Volkbein and their child Guido, and the two women who love her, Nora Flood and Jenny Petherbridge. Commenting on them all is Doctor Matthew O'Connor, whose outlandish monologues elevate their romantic losses to the level of Elizabethan tragedy. Sixty years after its first publication "Nightwood" is established as a twentieth-century classic, and this critical edition will allow readers and scholars to gain a greater understanding and appreciation of this unforgettable work.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

The expatriate Barnes's 1936 novel was a breakthrough both as a work of modernist fiction and for its frank treatment of lesbianism. Although it no doubt raised an eyebrow or two, the original version had actually been toned down by T.S. Eliot. This edition restores much of the deleted material and includes facsimiles of early drafts as well as a scholarly introduction and notes. The best version of Nightwood ever to see print.

Edwin Muir

"Miss Barnes prose is the only prose by a living writer which can be compared with that of Joyce, and in one point it is superior to his: in its richness of exact and vivid imagery....A style which is inevitable and inventive at the same time is the most powerful of all styles;...Miss Barnes has this style."
-- The Present Age

Dylan Thomas

"One of the three great prose books ever written by a woman."
-- Light and Dark

Dillan Thomas

"One of the three great prose books ever written by a woman." -- Light and Dark

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

I read Nightwood back in the 1930s and was very taken with it. I consider it one of the greatest books of the twentieth century. — William Burroughs

Today at 60, after a dozen readings, I'm as caught up as ever by the novel's gorgeous claustrophobia....If I have to name ten favorite books Nightwood would be among them. — Ned Rorem

It seems to me an undeniable work of genuis, and the genuis is not intermittant, but, with a few lapses, constant throughout and of unusual intensity....Extraordinary beauty drawn with brilliant wit and voice. — Edwin Muir