ABSTRACT
Early Life Djuna Chappell Barnes was born to an eccentric, bohemian family in the New York community of Cornwall-on-Hudson in 1892. Her mother, Elizabeth Chappell Barnes, was English and her father, Wald Barnes, American. Wald Barnes (a name he adopted in preference over his given name, Henry Budington) pursued many cultural interests, but does not seem to have been successful in any of them. He does, however, seem to have had an overwhelming and largely negative influence upon his daughter. There is indirect but compelling evidence of an incestuous relationship. Djuna Barnes takes up the theme of father-daughter incest repeatedly in her work, although usually obliquely. Whatever the physical or psychological reality of what took place, Djuna was evidently presented by her father in 1910 to a man far older than she was-Percy Faulkner, the brother of the woman destined to become Wald Barnes's second wife. Djuna's relationship with Faulkner seems to have been both informal and brief.
