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'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.[4]

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.[4]

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.[5] She was inspired to write about Satan and rebellion by the work of Percy Bysshe Shelley.[6]

In 1929 Lounsbery founded a Buddhism society in France which was influential in popularizing Buddhism for French and Western people.[7]

• An Iseult Idyll and Other Poems (1901) London, New York: John Lane
• Delilah, a drama in three acts (1904) New York: Scott-Thaw company
• 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