Aimée Crocker Gouraud

Born in Sacramento, California, in 1864, she was the daughter of railroad-era financier Edwin B. Crocker and grew up in great wealth. Later known as Aimée Crocker Gouraud, she built a public image as an American bohemian, traveler, mystic, and author, and became especially associated with extravagant social life in San Francisco, New York, and Paris.

She was fascinated by spirituality and by cultures beyond the conventional society she had been born into. Accounts of her life regularly highlight her travels in Asia, her interest in Buddhism and mysticism, and the theatrical way she presented herself to the world. That larger-than-life persona helped make her a newspaper favorite and eventually fed into the stories and fantasies she published.

Today she is remembered less as a conventional literary figure than as one of the most colorful personalities of her era: an heiress who cultivated freedom, controversy, and reinvention. For listeners coming to her work now, that unusual life adds an extra layer of intrigue to the imagination and mood of her writing.