The One Who is Legion

Natalie Clifford Barney

“For years I have been haunted by the idea that I should orchestrate those inner voices which sometimes speak to us in unison, and so compose a novel, not so much with the people about us, as with those within ourselves, for have we not several selves and cannot a story arise from their conflicts and harmonies?”

Thus wrote Natalie Clifford Barney in her author’s note to The One Who Is Legion, a novel which she published privately in London in 1930 in an edition of only 560 copies.

The book, which received scant notice at the time of its publication and has since been all but forgotten, is at once an occult work of genius and an early example of androgynous literature.

Here brought forth in a new edition that should secure its place as one of the great classics of modernism, this highly experimental tour de force, in which Barney reinterprets the stream of consciousness techniques James Joyce had used in Ulysses in her own highly original style, is a strange story of possession and fourth-dimensional materialism-and is, in fact, a glorious labyrinth of visions and emotions.

About the Author

Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972) was an American writer who spent most of her life in Paris, and formed notorious relationships with, among others, Liane de Pougy, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, and Renée Vivien. During her lifetime she published five volumes of poetry; three of epigrams; two books of essays; and one novel, The One Who is Legion, or AD’s After-Life (1930); as well as three memoirs.

Paperback, 166 pages. Release date: October 25,  2023
ISBN-13: 978-1-64525-146-0
Price: US$18.00

Hardcover, 168 pages. Limited edition of 90 copies
Release date: October 25,  2023
Price: US$32.00