Lucie Delarue-Mardrus (3 November 1874 inHonfleur – 26 April 1945 ) was a Frenchjournalist,poet,novelist,sculptor, historian and designer. She was a prolific writer, who produced more than 70 books in her lifetime.
In France, she is best known for her poem beginning with the line "L'odeur de mon pays était dans une pomme" ("In an apple I held the smell of my native land.") Her writings express her love of travel and her love for her nativeNormandy.L'Ex-voto (1932), for example, describes the life and milieu of the fishermen of Honfleur on the eve of the twentieth century.
She was married to the translatorJ. C. Mardrus from 1900 to 1915, but her primary sexual orientation was toward women. She was involved with several women throughout her lifetime, and she wrote extensively of lesbian love.
In 1902-03, she wrote a series of love poems to the American writer and salon hostessNatalie Clifford Barney, published posthumously in 1957 asNos secrètes amours (Our Secret Loves).[1] She also depicted Barney in her 1930 novel,L'Ange et les Pervers (The Angel and the Perverts), in which she said she "analyzed and described Natalie at length as well as the life into which she initiated me". Theprotagonist of the novel is ahermaphrodite named Marion who lives a double life, frequenting literary salons in female dress, then changing from skirt to trousers to attend gay soirées. Barney appears as "Laurette Wells", a salon hostess who spends much of the novel trying to win back an ex-lover, loosely based on Barney's real-life attempts at regaining her relationship with her former lover,Renée Vivien.[2]
One admirer wrote to describe Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, stating in part:—
"She is adorable. She sculpts, mounts to horse, loves a woman, then another, and yet another. She was able to free herself from her husband and has never embarked on a second marriage or the conquest of another man."
She was awarded the firstRenée Vivien prize for women poets in 1936.[3][4][5]
Le prix Renée-Vivien, d'une valeur de 10.000 francs, dû à la générosité de la baronne de Zuyten de Nyevelt, née de Rothschild, vient d'être attribué à Mme Lucie Delarue-Mardrus. Ce grand prix de la poésie, fondé en souvenir de la grande poétesse Renée Vivien, doit être décerné chaque année à une femme française ou étrangère, pour un recueil de poésies édité ou manuscrit.
The Renee Vivien prize to Mme Lucie Delarue-Mardrus for her collected poetry.
In 1936 she was the first recipient of the Renee Vivien Prize for poetry.
