Author. She was a prolific Russian poet as well as a playwright, novelist, editor, political essayist and religious figure. Her family were from German aristocracies, who relocated to Russia centuries before her birth. Her surname was also spelled Hippius. The wife of writer Dmitri Merezhkovsky, she forged her own reputation as a prominent member of the Russian Symbolist, an intellectual and artistic movement during Russia's Silver Age. The principal subject of her fiction and poetry was the duality of nature, occasionally expressed in terms of gender-reversal and in a hothouse style influenced by Dostoyevsky. Born Zinaida Nikolayevna Gippius, she received little formal education, yet was already a published poet when she entered the Kiev Institute for Women at age 17. On January 8, 1889 in Tiflis, she married Merezhkovsky, and their St. Petersburg literary salon became a focal point for the Symbolists, notably Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely. She is credited with helping to launch Blok's literary career. At first, she wrote under a male pseudonym and as evidence in an 1897 photograph and in Leon Bakst's 1906 drawing, she dressed in men's clothing. The couple had a non-traditional marriage. Gippius first attracted attention with her unconventional behavior, cultivating an androgynous image, and later as an outspoken and perceptive critic. Breaking from the traditional Russian Orthodox Church, she and her husband co-founded in 1901 the Religious and Philosophical Meetings, which tried to create ties between Russia's revolutionary thinkers and religious leaders under the banner of a "New Church." She became a metaphysical thinker. In 1903, she was the editor and publisher of the literary magazine, "The Path." For political reasons, the couple relocated in 1905 to Paris in exile as they condemned openly the October Revolution. After a short return to Russia in 1908, they settled, by the way of Poland and Italy, in Paris permanently by 1920 as they opposed the Bolsheviks with her authoring bitter political essays on the subject. The couple were joined in the Russian exodus of many prominent authors, philosophers, artists, actors, and political figures, forming a Russian community within Paris, where the couple started another literary salon. She wrote for the stage "The Green Ring: A Play in Four Acts" in 1920. In 1927, she was part of the developing of the Sunday literary society, The Green Light. During the 1920s, she had much of her earlier writings republished in French editions. Since then, her works were published in English, German, Italian and a host of other languages. Her compositions include the novels "The Bitter End" in 1911 and "Roman-Tsarevich" in 1912, six collections of short stories, five books of poetry, among them "Verses" in 1910 and "Radiance" in 1938, and a two-volume memoir, "Living Persons" in 1925. After her husband's sudden death in 1941, she started his biography while still in her grief. She died in 1945 before completing her biography of Merezhkovsky, which was edited and published in 1951. In her lifetime her poetry was last published in the Soviet Union in a 1925 anthology. In the 21st century, her writings are not readily recognized in Western Europe or the United States.