A Woman Appeared to Me
Report an issue
Tell us what's wrong and we'll take a look.
Thanks – we got it. We'll review and follow up if needed.
Appearing here together for the first time in English, in an exquisite translation by Brian Stableford, are the two markedly different novels issued by Renée Vivien under the title of A Woman Appeared to Me.
First published in 1904 and 1905, these masterpieces of symbolist fiction recount Vivien's obsessive, torturing love affairs, most especially with the American writer Natalie Clifford Barney. Originally received with hostility due to their fervent championship of lesbianism, these highly sophisticated specimens of poetic prose, which offer an unusual combination of delicacy and fervor, economy and flamboyance, today can be seen as groundbreaking, and quite unparalleled, confessions of the pain and despair of intense amour.
Renée Vivien
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.
More by Renée Vivien
Brian M. Stableford
Translated by
Brian Stableford lives in Reading, England.
Why Readwise Books?
Readwise Books is an ebook & audiobook platform that automatically logs how much you and your friends read, making it fun and easy to read more. Learn more →