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.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/87005129/grace-constant-lounsbery-new-york-family/ |last=Innerly |first=Ida |work=Lexington Leader |location=Lexington, Kentucky |date=January 26, 1906 |title=Doings of the Smart Set }} She graduated from Bryn Mawr College. Lounsbery was friends with Gertrude Stein and often hosted gatherings at the family home in Baltimore.{{Cite journal |last=Giesenkirchen |first=Michaela |date=2011 |title=Adding Up William and Henry: The Psychodynamic Geometry of Q.E.D. |url=http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/american_literary_realism/v043/43.2.giesenkirchen.html |journal=American Literary Realism |language=en |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=112–132 |doi=10.1353/alr.2011.0005 |s2cid=162888848 |issn=1940-5103|url-access=subscription }}

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.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/87004572/grace-constant-lounsbery-play-in-paris/ |title=Paris is America's Capital |work=The Oregon Daily Journal |last=Du Bois |first=Henri Pene |date=March 21, 1904}} Bernhardt played the young man. The play was a benefit for Jews in Russia.

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, with one reporter calling her "an out-door lady of manly sports" who used the initial G to obscure her feminine name.{{cite news |url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/87005915/grace-constant-lounsbery-and-sarah-bernh/ |work=The Kansas City Star |last=Fyles |first=Franklin |title=New York Theatrical Gossip |date=December 24, 1905}} Lounsbery moved in a circle of lesbians in Paris.{{Cite web |last=True Latimer |first=Tirza |date=May 2015 |title=Aesthetic Allegiances : Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun |url=http://cahun-moore.com/collectif-heritages-partages-de-claude-cahun-et-marcel-moore/aesthetic-allegiances-marcel-moore-and-claude-cahun/ |access-date=2022-08-02 |website=Héritages partagés de Claude Cahun et Marcel Moore, du XIXe au XXIe siècles. Symbolisme, modernisme, surréalisme, postérité contemporaine |language=}}{{Cite book |last=Leider |first=Emily Wortis |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/1294423989 |title=California's Daughter : Gertrude Atherton and Her Times |publisher=Stanford University Press |year=1991 |isbn=978-1-5036-2185-5 |location=Palo Alto |pages=181–200 |chapter=9. Superheroes |oclc=1294423989}}{{Cite book |last=Leontis |first=Artemis |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1080938485 |title=Eva Palmer Sikelianos : a life in ruins |date=2019 |isbn=978-0-691-18790-7 |location=Princeton, New Jersey |pages=21 |chapter=Sapphic Performances |oclc=1080938485}} 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.{{Cite web |last=Palmer |first=Michael P. |date=July 2015 |title=Guide to the Addison M. Metcalf Collection of Gertrude Steiniana (Claremont Colleges: Scripps College, Ella Strong Denison Library) |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8k35z26/ |access-date=2022-08-02 |website=Online Archive of California |quote=Stein first began writing in 1903, beginning Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum), an account of her ill-starred relationship with Mabel Haynes, Grace Lounsbury , and May Bookstaver (not published until 1950)}} Lounsbery also hosted literary and artistic salons; Stein and Ernest Hemingway met Ezra Pound at one of these evenings.{{Cite web |last=Stein |first=Gertrude |date=1933-08-01 |title=Ernest Hemingway and the Post-War Decade: Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Iv |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1933/08/ernest-hemingway-and-the-post-war-decade-autobiography-of-alice-b-toklas-iv/650661/ |access-date=2022-08-02 |website=The Atlantic |language=en}}

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.{{cite magazine |magazine=The Publishers Weekly Book Review |date=February 17, 1912 |last=Le Gallienne |first=Richard |title=Some New Poetry |page=544 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D-oxAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA544}} She was inspired to write about Satan and rebellion by the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.{{cite book |url=https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007665193 |page=35 |last=Lounsbery |first=Grace Constant |title=Poems of revolt, and Satan unbound |location=New York |publisher=Moffat, Yard and Company |date=September 1911 }}

In 1929 Lounsbery founded a Buddhism society in France which was influential in popularizing Buddhism for French and Western people.{{cite book |title=Buddhism in the Modern World |page=122 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ghoiBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA122 |year=2012 |last=McMahan |first=David L. |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781136493492}}

• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007666064 An Iseult Idyll and Other Poems] (1901) London, New York: John Lane
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000209105 Delilah, a drama in three acts] (1904) New York: Scott-Thaw company
• [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007665193 Poems of revolt, and Satan unbound] (1911) New York: Moffat, Yard and company
• Buddhist Meditation in the Southern School: Theory and Practice for Westerners (1950) London

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Category:1876 births

Category:1964 deaths

Category:American poets

Category:American dramatists and playwrights

Category:Satanism in popular culture

Category:Organization founders

Category:American women founders

Category:American LGBTQ dramatists and playwrights