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Apartment · Notre-Dame-des-Champs (6th) · 6e arrondissement

9 rue Saint-Romain

The buildingStill standing
Getting inOutside only
What's there nowSomeone else

Private. A short, quiet street off the rue de Sèvres.

An address Djuna Barnes shared with Thelma Wood, documented by a surviving letter of 2 February 1928 that carries it as her correspondence address.

Address
9 rue Saint-Romain, 75006 Paris
Years
A Barnes address in the later 1920s; documented on a letter of 2 February 1928

The place, briefly

Djuna Barnes and Thelma Wood also lived on the rue Saint-Romain, a short street running off the rue de Sèvres in the 6th. The evidence here is unusually concrete for a Paris address: a Barnes letter dated 2 February 1928 carries it, and the letter survives in the James Joyce collection at the University at Buffalo.

1928 was the year Barnes published two books — Ryder, which briefly became a bestseller in America and was censored for its illustrations, and the privately printed Ladies Almanack. It was also close to the end of the relationship with Wood, which broke up in 1928 or shortly after.

The building is private and there is nothing to see but the street.

Key facts

Documented by
A Barnes letter dated 2 February 1928
Where the letter is
The James Joyce collection, University at Buffalo
Published that year
Ryder and Ladies Almanack
Access
Private — exterior only

Timeline

  1. 1928

    A Barnes letter of 2 February gives 9 rue Saint-Romain as her address.

  2. 1928

    Ryder and Ladies Almanack are published.

On the map

Questions before you go

How is this address documented?

By a surviving Barnes letter dated 2 February 1928, which carries the address and is held in the James Joyce collection at the University at Buffalo.

Writers who knew this place

Illustrated portrait of Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

American · American writer and illustrator (1892–1982). She was a New York newspaper reporter for eight years before she was a novelist, spent the 1920s and 1930s in Paris, and wrote Nightwood, the 1936 novel T. S. Eliot took to Faber and introduced.

Lived here · 1928

A surviving Barnes letter dated 2 February 1928 carries the address 9 rue Saint-Romain, Paris. The letter is held in the James Joyce collection at the University at Buffalo.

James Joyce Collection: Letters XI

Within walking distance

The Friday Letter

Paris, one address at a time.

The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.

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