Dream Book

Alice Pike Barney (American, 1857-1931) - Dream Book, c.1900. - - When her daughter Natalie wrote a chapbook of French poetry, Quelques Portraits-Sonnets de Femmes, Barney was pleased to provide illustrations. She did not understand the implications of the book’s love poems addressed to women and had no idea that three of the four women who modeled for her were her daughter’s lovers. Her husband Albert, alerted to the book’s theme by a newspaper review headlined “Sappho Sings in Washington”, rushed to Paris, where he bought and destroyed the publisher’s remaining stock and printing plates. - NégyArt (Szingy Books)