By Djuna Barnes
Introduction by Sarah Schulman
With illustrations by the author
ISBN: 9781628975581
Publication Date: 02/17/2026
A "striking lesbian manifesto and a deft parody" by the acclaimed author of Nightwood. (—Library Journal)
Nearly 100 years after its original 1928 publicationsent shockwaves through the literary scene, Ladies Almanack reigns as a brilliant modernist composition and one of the most audacious lesbian texts of the 20th century. At once a scathing social satire and a love letter to the wealthy expatriates of Paris high society, the book delights in its cast of characters, who are clear analogues to Barnes’ lesbian literary contemporaries—and the book’s first readers.
Arranged by month and written in a pastiche of Restoration literature, Ladies Almanack records the life and lovers of Dame Evangeline Musset, a pseudonymous stand-in for Natalie Clifford Barney. Accompanied for the first time by Barnes’ original Elizabethan-style woodcut illustrations, this new edition also features a sharp, impassioned introduction by Sarah Schulman reflecting on the ways in which lesbian lives have changed—and haven’t—since the 1920s. After decades out of print, Dalkey Archive is proud to revive the Ladies Almanack for contemporary readers: a classic that delivers all the salacious drama of The L Word with the literary wit and wordplay of Shakespeare.
Biographical Information
Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) is best known as the author of Nightwood, one of the finest novels of the modernist period. She published works in virtually every genre: short stories, poetry, journalism, drama, and pastiche, often illustrated with her own drawings. A notorious figure in the 1920s and 1930s, she became a recluse in her later years and was largely forgotten. But since her death, a major biography and several critical studies have established her importance in 20th-century literature. Dalkey Archive Press has reissued her Nightwood, Ryder, and Ladies Almanack.
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and AIDS historian. Her twenty-first book is The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity.