ABSTRACT
Zinaida Gippius, poet, playwright, prose writer, essayist, and literary critic, was born in Russia, in 1869 and died in Paris in 1945. The oldest child of Nikolai Romanovich and Anastasiia Stepanovna Gippius, by the turn of the century she was, according to one critic, “the most talented of our woman writers (pisatel'nitsa-zhenshchinca) ” “a genuine virtuoso of the word” (Bezrodnyi 1990: 3). Although educated at home, Gippius read widely and, even as an adolescent, wrote prodigiously. At age 10, already confident of her talent, she asked her Russian language teacher rhetorically: “Do you know another little girl who can write like me—without a single mistake?” (Bezrodnyi 1990:3).
