A nice middle-class Berliner, age 19, falls in love with a 14 year old street hustler.

    In this barely disguised roman à clef, the legendary American heiress, writer, and arts patron Natalie Clifford Barney becomes the character N., the dashing Italian baroness Mimi Franchetti is M., and the beautiful French courtesan Liane de Pougy is L. Barney writes of an erotic liaison that breaks all taboos but also reveals N.’s vulnerability as she unexpectedly becomes the devastated “third woman.” The story ends with a powerful dialogue on the challenges of love.             Never before published in English, and only recently published in French, this modernist, experimental work has been brought to light by Chelsea Ray’s research. It reveals a more complex Natalie Barney and expands modernist literary representations of lesbian love. Ray’s translation is augmented by her essay and notes highlighting themes of modernism and queer studies, as well as by Melanie Hawthorne’s introduction.

    Controversy about the propriety of staging a New York production of his 1926 play La prisonniere [The Captive] was swept away by the "restrained though uncompromising tragedy" that resulted.