(1877-1909) and Englishwoman who wrote her poetry in French, Vivien was the lesbian Baudelaire. Her remarkably candid and intensely decadent verse was forgotten when Modernism dominated literature. She was the lover of Natalie Clifford Barney, and her world of sapphic Paris is unforgettably portrayed in Radclyffe Hall’s classic The Well of Loneliness. Re-discovered in the 1970’s, she has begun to find translators, of whom Samantha Pious is the most distinguished, as well as the only one still in print.

image: Portrait de Renée Vivien par Otto Wegener, conservé dans les archives de la Smithsonian Institution (numéro SIA2015-006918) Otto Wegener Public domain