The torsional rigidity, for small elastic torsion, of bars of thin-walled open section, is, in general, altered by initial tension, compression, bending, or other axial stress. This appears in the increase of torsional stiffness of strips due to tension, in the decrease to zero in open sections which buckle torsionally as columns, and also has an influence on lateral buckling of beams. This paper contains an extension of the Saint Venant solution for ordinary torsion to the problem of torsion in the presence of initial axial stress with any distribution on the cross section. The results are confirmed by tests, and validate the intuitively derived formulas which are in use.