The unfortunate consequence is that Anglophone audiences are relatively unfamiliar with her works in comparison to one of her contemporary American expatriates, Gertrude Stein. A writer herself, Barney has been far less known on this side of the Atlantic because her French literary production remained untranslated into English. She actively worked to promote female writers and artists, often offering everything from emotional to financial support. Barney established a reputation as an engaging intellectual force around whom circulated some of France's most celebrated writers, musicians, artists, and thinkers. As an American heiress, she was educated at the exclusive girls' school, Les Ruches, outside of Paris, and afterwards spent most of her life as an expatriate in France. Originally published posthumously in French in 2013, this experimental novel reveals not only new dimensions of Barney's personal life, but it also makes an important contribution to LGBTQ and French literature, as well as cultural history.īarney was at the epicenter of Paris's burgeoning lesbian communities of the Belle Époque and interwar years. Chelsea Ray's translation of Natalie Clifford Barney's Women Lovers, or The Third Woman provides a fresh and fascinating window into the life of the writer, salonière (salon hostess), and translator Natalie Barney for English-speaking audiences.
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