Renée Vivien

Robin Imhof (University of the Pacific)

Ed. by Nigel Harkness, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.06: French Writing and Culture: Early Twentieth-century , 1900-1945.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

Born 1877
Died 1909
Activity 1901-1909

Places

Born in England
Active in France

Cultural Identities

LGBTQ

Activities

Primary

Poet

Other

Novelist

Resources

Vivien's Works

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The poet known as Renée Vivien was born Pauline Mary Tarn to a British father and an American mother in London. Her writing career was short but prolific: she published more than 20 volumes of poetry and prose, almost exclusively in French, before her death at the age of thirty-two. The poetry published in her lifetime garnered her a reputation as one of the best second-generation Symbolist poets. Proto-feminist in her vision, Vivien was just one of many subsequent expatriate women writers and artists who found Paris a more amenable home for expressing same-sex desires in life and art than was possible elsewhere.

Vivien's family fortune came from her paternal grandfather, who owned a chain of dry-goods stores. The Tarn family moved from London to Paris when Vivien was a year old, and it

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1839 words

Citation: Imhof, Robin. "Renée Vivien". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 January 2017 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13743, accessed 22 November 2024.]