The Girl Who Loved Camellias
  • Published: 15 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780804171557
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

The Girl Who Loved Camellias

The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

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The little known, riveting story of the most famous courtesan of her time: muse and mistress of Alexandre Dumas fils and Franz Liszt, the inspiration for Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi's La Traviata, one of the most sought after, adored women of 1840s Paris.

This riveting biography brilliantly explores the short, intense, and passionate life of the country girl from Normandy, who at thirteen fled her brute of a father to go to Paris. Almost overnight she became one of the most admired courtesans of the 1840s—the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas fils’ The Lady of the Camellias and Verdi’s La Traviata. With her aristocratic ways, elegant clothes and signature camellias, Marie was always a subject of fascination at the opera and the boulevard cafés. Her death at twenty-three from tuberculosis created such an outpouring of sympathy in the press that Charles Dickens, who was in Paris at the time, was amazed. “Everything is erased in the face of an incident which is far more important,” he wrote, “the romantic death of one of the glories of the demi-monde, the beautiful, the famous Marie Duplessis.”
  • Published: 15 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780804171557
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $49.99
Categories:

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Praise for The Girl Who Loved Camellias

  • "With her colorful new biography, Julie Kavanagh exposes the tawdry reality behind her heroine's legend." --The New York Times
  • "In taking on Duplessis, Kavanagh pieces together the details of a glamorous and tragic life of a woman whose influence as a muse has outlived her own fame." --The New Yorker
  • "Kavanagh underscores what made Duplessis such an object of fascination.... She is La Traviata's Violetta and Marguerite in the younger Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias.... An enigmatic woman who both deeply embod[ied] and brazenly def[ied] the conventions of her time." --The Daily Beast
  • "Ms. Kavanagh is a well-established biographer and achieved international fame with her previous, definitive biography on the great dancer, Nureyev. This new book cements her well-deserved reputation." --New York Journal of Books
  • "Julie Kavanagh ships us into 19th-century Paris and into the boudouir of Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis." --Vanity Fair

  • "With her colorful new biography, Julie Kavanagh exposes the tawdry reality behind her heroine's legend." --The New York Times
  • "In taking on Duplessis, Kavanagh pieces together the details of a glamorous and tragic life of a woman whose influence as a muse has outlived her own fame." --The New Yorker
  • "Kavanagh underscores what made Duplessis such an object of fascination.... She is La Traviata's Violetta and Marguerite in the younger Dumas's The Lady of the Camellias.... An enigmatic woman who both deeply embod[ied] and brazenly def[ied] the conventions of her time." --The Daily Beast
  • "Ms. Kavanagh is a well-established biographer and achieved international fame with her previous, definitive biography on the great dancer, Nureyev. This new book cements her well-deserved reputation." --New York Journal of Books
  • "Julie Kavanagh ships us into 19th-century Paris and into the boudouir of Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis." --Vanity Fair

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