Sapho

Renée Vivien (1877-1909) was a British-born poet who wrote almost exclusively in French, becoming one of the most striking voices of the fin-de-siècle Paris literary scene. Born Pauline Mary Tarn in London, she moved to Paris as a young woman and reinvented herself as a poet steeped in classical antiquity, openly writing of love between women at a time when doing so took real courage. A devoted admirer of Sappho, she taught herself ancient Greek to translate the poet's surviving fragments, publishing her landmark Sapho in 1903. Vivien died at just 32, leaving behind a body of work that helped lay the foundation for openly lesbian literature in the twentieth century.