A. R. de Lens

Born in Paris in 1881, Aline Réveillaud de Lens wrote under the name A. R. de Lens. She was both an author and an artist, and that mix of talents gives her writing a strikingly visual quality.

After marrying the painter André de Lens, she lived for periods in Tunisia and Morocco while he worked in the colonial administration. Those experiences shaped much of her work: she wrote novels, stories, and journals that drew on everyday life around her, especially the lives of women and domestic spaces that were often hidden from outside view.

She died in 1925 at the age of 44. Though not a widely known name today, her books and diaries remain valuable for readers interested in travel writing, French literary life, and personal perspectives on North Africa in the early twentieth century.