Although Grace King spent less than five of the eighty-one years of her life in France, her descriptions of those years make up nearly two-thirds of her autobiography, Memories of a Southern Woman of Letters (1932). As a woman of letters, King found herself, her voice, and her career trajectory in her journeys to France; most specifically, through her reciprocal intellectual friendship with a French writer she met in Paris, Marie Thérèse de Solms Blanc, more commonly known under her pen name Theo. Bentzon or Th. Bentzon. King first met Blanc in Paris, modeled her New Orleans literary salons after Blanc’s, and praised her highly in her Memories. Blanc and King’s friendship, mutual support, and advocacy for one another allowed both of them to expand their visions of their own works. Blanc also introduced King to other prominent Parisian salon hostesses and King published articles on all these salons for American readers. It is primarily King’s 1893 and 1896 articles on Parisian women’s salons and Blanc’s 1895 book The Condition of Woman in the United States: A Traveler’s Notes that reveal how their relationship opened up new possibilities beyond the models their home cultures afforded them. Through an examination of these works, a portrait emerges of King’s vision of what an intellectual woman could be. Visiting the Parisian salons and befriending Madame Blanc helped King move, at least in her imagination, from the forcibly confined Southern lady she had been in New Orleans to the freely retreating intellectual woman of the kind she had met in Paris. In knowing these role models, King found herself elsewhere, and in finding herself elsewhere, she was able to forge a long and varied writing career.