Therese Bentzon (1840–1907)

Thérèse Bentzon was the pen name of Marie-Thérèse von Solms, the daughter of Edward von Solms, a German diplomat in Paris, and his wife Olympe Adrienne Bentzon. She was raised in part by her grandparents, in whose house she was born, and learned both German and English, due to her father's origins and having an English nurse. In 1856, she married Louis Blanc and had a child, but three years later, her husband left her. Marie-Thérèse began writing for different newspapers and magazines. She was introduced by her step-grandfather to George Sand, and spent time at Sand's house in Nohant. Sand introduced her in turn to the editor of the magazine Revue des Deux Mondes, François Buloz, who helped launch her successful writing career. She took "Therese Bentzon" as her pen name and was sometimes known as "Théodore Bentzon," as masculine pseudonyms were useful to women writers in the 19th-century. In 1893, she was sent by the Revue des Deux Mondes to the USA to report on the condition of women there. She traveled widely and met numerous prominent social and political figures, feminists, and abolitionists. On her her return to France, she compiled her articles into a book, Les femmes américaines chez elles (1896), that became a bestseller and won her third Prix Montyon from the Académie française.