BARNEY, NATALIE (1876-1972), Parisian Writer and Salon Hostess

"My only books were women's looks," Barney once wrote of her schoolgirl days. "At twelve I knew exactly what I liked and I firmly decided not to let myself be diverted from my tastes." As a young adult, she fled her upper-class existence in Washington, D.C. to take up residence in Paris, where she became known as l'Amazone, and where her affairs with various famous women, including the poet Renee Vivian and the spectacularly beautiful courtesan Liane de Pougy, aroused public curiosity and attention. Her weekly literary salon - held every Friday for more that sixty years - were also renowned as a meeting place for the cultural elite, and regularly attracted such notables as Anatole France, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Andre Gide. Barney wrote numerous epigrams, memoirs, and poetry, but her fame rests primarily on her reputation as the most prominent and candid lesbian of her day.