Of greater literary importance is Renée Vivien, whose poetry has been pronounced most perfect in form of any French verse written in the first quarter of the century, and this quality is the more remarkable in that her native language was not French but English. As she died at thirty-two, its quantity also deserves mention, for her collected poems run to five hundred pages; besides she produced two volumes of “prose-poems” which a decade later would have been called free verse, a prose satire, and an autobiographical novel. In addition she and a friend collaborated on a number of similar volumes of verse and personal narrative under the pseudonym of Paule Riversdale. As originally published her work appeared in this order: _Études et Préludes_, 1901; _Cendres et Poussières_, 1902; _Evocations_, _Sappho_, and _La Vénus des Aveugles_, 1903; _Kitharèdes_, 1904; _A l’Heure des Mains Joints_, 1906; _Sillages_ and _Flambeaux Éteints_, 1908; and posthumously in 1910, _Dans un Coin de Violettes_, _Le Vent des Vaisseaux_, and _Haillons_. Prose-poems: _Brumes de Fjords_, 1902, and _Du Vert au Violet_, 1903; _La Dame à la Louve_ (a collection of short stories), _Le Christ_, _Aphrodite et M. Pépin_ (satire), and _Une Femme M’Apparut_, (novel), 1904. Vivien was more openly lesbian than any woman so far encountered, but the few selections and biographical notes found in anthologies are careful to conceal this fact, and since further text and comment are not readily available in this country, she will be discussed here at some length. Almost the only sustained account of her personal life is included in a critical volume by her good friend André Germain; however, as it was published in 1917 when most of the persons concerned were still living, it omitted all personal names and many details of the poet’s troubled history. Her publisher and friend, Edward Sansot, has attested that all her work was autobiographical in its inspiration, and so from internal evidence and scattered fact it is possible to supplement Germain’s picture. She was born (1877) Pauline Tarn, daughter of a Michigan heiress and an English gentleman of a Kentish family distinguished in law and the church. The girl was born in Hawaii and spent her first dozen years in travel, in French and German schools, and in Paris. From the fragmentary accounts one infers a background to equal any of Henry James’s pictures of international marriage and difficult childhood. Between twelve and sixteen she was happy for a time with another English girl housed in the same Paris _hôtel_, whom she met through the intimacy of their respective governesses. Violet Shilleto was already a precocious mystic whose concern with “the meaning of life” made a lasting impression on her young companion. No shadow seems to have fallen on their passionate friendship before Pauline was removed to England at sixteen.