Carman Dee Barnes (November 20, 1912 – August 19, 1980) was an American novelist.

Early life

Barnes was born on November 20, 1912, in

Chattanooga, Tennessee Chattanooga ( ) is a city in Hamilton County, Tennessee, United States, and its county seat. It is located along the Tennessee River and borders Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the south. With a population of 181,099 in 2020, it is Tennessee ...

. She was the daughter of James Hunter Neal and poet and folklorist Lois Diantha Mills (1889-1939). Her last name is that of her first stepfather, Wellington Barnes, founder of the Dixie-Portland Cement Company, who died in 1927. Her mother later married musicologist and

Vanderbilt University Vanderbilt University (informally Vandy or VU) is a private university, private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, it was named in honor of shipping and railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provide ...

professor George Pullen Jackson. Barnes attended the Girls' Preparatory School in Chattanooga, the Ward-Belmont School for Girls in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...

, and the Gardner School in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

Career

Barnes was only sixteen years old when her debut novel, ''Schoolgirl'', was published in 1929. Based on Barnes' own experience at a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

for girls, the novel detailed the sexual experimentation, including lesbianism, of Naomi Bradshaw and her fellow students. The scandalous novel was a best seller internationally and got Barnes expelled from the Gardner School when her principal read it. Barnes and dramatist Alfonso Washington Pezet adapted the novel for the stage and it debuted at the Ritz Theatre on Barnes' eighteenth birthday. Starring

Joanna Roos Joanna Roos (born Dorothy Roos, January 11, 1901 – May 13, 1989) was an American Broadway, radio, television, and film actress and a playwright. She was born in Brooklyn in 1901 and attended Syracuse University as well as Yvette Guilbert's Scho ...

as Bradshaw, it was considered a flop and ran only 28 performances.

Paramount Pictures Paramount Pictures Corporation, commonly known as Paramount Pictures or simply Paramount, is an American film production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the flagship namesake subsidiary of Paramount ...

purchased the film rights for $30,000, but the novel never made it to the screen. Paramount also signed Barnes to acting and writing contracts, but she never wrote for or acted in films. Her second novel, ''Beau Lover'' (1930), is told entirely in second person singular. She followed this up with ''Mother, Be Careful!'' (1932), which satirized

Hollywood Hollywood usually refers to: * Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California * Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States Hollywood may also refer to: Places United States * Hollywood District (disambiguation) * Hollywood ...

, and ''Young Woman'' (1934), which also featured Naomi Bradshaw. In 1940, she sponsored a lecture series by the architect Claude F. Bragdon which were later collected and published as ''The Arch Lectures'' (1942). The next year she studied with esotericist P. D. Ouspensky. With her husband she collaborated on the unproduced play ''A Passionate Victorian'', about actress

Fanny Kemble Frances Anne Kemble (later Butler; 27 November 180915 January 1893) was a British actress from a Kemble family, theatre family in the early and mid-nineteenth century. She was a well-known and popular writer and abolitionist whose published wor ...

. In 1946, Barnes published her final novel, ''Time Lay Asleep'', about a large family in the southern United States. In that book, Barnes experimented with chronological, psychological, and symbolic elements in a way that has been compared to the work of

William Faulkner William Cuthbert Faulkner (; September 25, 1897 – July 6, 1962) was an American writer. He is best known for William Faulkner bibliography, his novels and short stories set in the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, a stand-in fo ...

Personal life

Barnes became the second wife of writer and diplomat

Hamilton Fish Armstrong Hamilton Fish Armstrong (April 7, 1893 – April 24, 1973) was an American journalist who is known for editing ''Foreign Affairs'' from 1928 to 1972. Early life Armstrong was a member of the Fish Family of American politicians. His father w ...

in 1945. After a long separation, Barnes and Armstrong divorced in 1951. Later that year, Barnes left the United States for Austria permanently. Following a series of breakdowns in 1952, she received

insulin shock therapy Insulin shock therapy or insulin coma therapy was a form of psychiatric treatment in which patients were repeatedly injected with large doses of insulin in order to produce daily comas over several weeks.Neustatter WL (1948) ''Modern psychiatry ...

and

psychotherapy Psychotherapy (also psychological therapy, talk therapy, or talking therapy) is the use of Psychology, psychological methods, particularly when based on regular Conversation, personal interaction, to help a person change behavior, increase hap ...

treatment.

Death

Barnes died in

Salzburg, Austria Salzburg is the fourth-largest city in Austria. In 2020 its population was 156,852. The city lies on the Salzach River, near the border with Germany and at the foot of the Alps mountains. The town occupies the site of the Roman settlement ...

, in 1980.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barnes, Carman Dee 1912 births 1980 deaths Writers from Chattanooga, Tennessee American women novelists Novelists from Tennessee American expatriates in Austria 20th-century American novelists Ward–Belmont College alumni 20th-century American women writers