For most literary critics, Renée Vivien might best be described as one of the many writers who briefly strutted and fretted upon the literary stage of the Belle Epoque and then were heard no more. For a few critics, however, Vivien remains one of the more compelling women's voices in French literature between Louise Labé and the Belle Epoque. Some feminist critics have attempted to revive interest in Vivien's poetry, but a besetting difficulty for the would-be champions is that although Vivien was both a feminist and a lesbian, most of her poetry is couched in the pose of romantic idealism, alternating between wistful and anguished tones. Her work is marked by a self-dramatization that was more appealing in the Belle Epoque than in an era shaped by a further hundred years of modernity's war against artistic delicacy and genuinely felt noble sentiment.

Vivien was...