Grace Constant Lounsbery

Her mother named her Grace Constant. She adopted the last name Lounsbery from a prestigious branch of her family, writing as G. Constant Lounsbery.^[2] She graduated from Bryn Mawr College.^[3] Lounsbery was friends with Gertrude Stein and often hosted gatherings at the family home in Baltimore.^[4]

Lounsbery's play L'Escarpolette (in English, The Swing) opened at Sarah Bernhardt's playhouse in Paris in 1904. The play is based upon an 18th-century painting of the same name, which depicts a flirtation between a young man and a woman on a swing.^[3] Bernhardt played the young man. The play was a benefit for Jews in Russia.^[5]

Her doings in Paris were reported back to the United States by gossip columnists. They found her fascinating and often remarked on her masculine manner of dress and behavior,^[3][2] with one reporter calling her "an out-door lady of manly sports" who used the initial G to obscure her feminine name.^[5] Lounsbery moved in a circle of lesbians in Paris.^[6][7][8] Gertrude Stein wrote of an early romantic relationship with Lounsbery in Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum), written in 1903 but not published until 1950.^[9] Lounsbery also hosted literary and artistic salons; Stein and Ernest Hemingway met Ezra Pound at one of these evenings.^[10]

In the poem Satan Unbound Lounsbery advocated for a spirit of rebellion embodied by the figure of Satan. She reminded the reader that the American Revolution was a rebellion, and felt that a similar rebellion was needed to bring about socialism.^[11] She was inspired to write about Satan and rebellion by the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.^[12]

In 1929 Lounsbery founded a Buddhism society in France which was influential in popularizing Buddhism for French and Western people.^[13]