Ladies Almanack, or Ladies Almanack: showing their Signs and their Tides; their Moons and their Changes; the Seasons as it is with them; their Eclipses and Equinoxes; as well as a full Record of diurnal and nocturnal Distempers, written & illustrated by a lady of fashion, written by Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes

Djuna Barnes was an American writer who played an important part in the development of 20th century English language modernist writing and was one of the key figures in 1920s and '30s bohemian Paris after filling a similar role in the Greenwich Village of the teens...

 in 1928, is a roman à clef

Roman à clef

Roman à clef or roman à clé , French for "novel with a key", is a phrase used to describe a novel about real life, overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship between the nonfiction and the fiction...

about a predominantly lesbian social circle centering on Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris....

's salon

Salon (gathering)

A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...

 in Paris. It is written in an archaic, Rabelaisian style, with Barnes's own illustrations in the style of Elizabethan woodcut

Woodcut

Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...

s.

Barney appears as Dame Evangeline Musset, "who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most, lament Cruelly". "[A] Pioneer and a Menace" in her youth, Dame Musset has reached "a witty and learned Fifty"; she rescues women in distress, dispenses wisdom, and upon her death is elevated to sainthood. Also appearing pseudonymously are Elisabeth de Gramont

Elisabeth de Gramont

Antoinette Corisande Élisabeth, Duchess of Clermont-Tonnerre was a French writer of the early 20th century, best known for her long-term lesbian relationship with Natalie Clifford Barney...

, Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks, born Beatrice Romaine Goddard , was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the color gray...

, Dolly Wilde

Dolly Wilde

Dorothy Ierne Wilde, known as Dolly Wilde, was an Anglo-Irish socialite, made famous by her family connections and her reputation as a witty conversationalist...

, Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall

Radclyffe Hall was an English poet and author, best known for the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness.- Life :...

 and her partner Una, Lady Troubridge

Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge

Una Vincenzo, Lady Troubridge was a British sculptor and translator. She is best known as the long-time partner of Marguerite "John" Radclyffe-Hall, the author of The Well of Loneliness.Troubridge was an educated woman who had many achievements in her own right...

, Janet Flanner

Janet Flanner

Janet Flanner was an American writer and journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name "Genêt"...

 and Solita Solano

Solita Solano

Solita Solano, real name Sarah Wilkinson was an American writer, poet and journalist.-Life:‎...

, and Mina Loy

Mina Loy

Mina Loy born Mina Gertrude Löwry was an artist, poet, playwright, novelist, Futurist, actress, Christian Scientist, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first generation modernists to achieve posthumous recognition. Her poetry was admired by T. S...

.

The obscure language, inside jokes, and ambiguity of Ladies Almanack have kept critics arguing about whether it is an affectionate satire or a bitter attack, but Barney herself loved the book and reread it throughout her life.