Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu

Hortensia Papadat-Bengescu is one of the most important Romanian authors of the first half of the twentieth century. She was thirty-six when her first published work appeared in the Bucharest-based French literary journal La Politique, under the pseudonym Loys. In 1913 she began to contribute poems and stories to the literary magazine Viata Româneasca (Romanian Life) in Iasi. In 1926 Papadat-Bengescu published her first major novel, Fecioarele despletite. In 1936 she was awarded the Grand National prize of the Society of the Romanian Writers, and in 1946 she received the national prize for prose. She died in 1955 after a long illness.