The Girl Who Loved Camellias
  • Published: 15 August 2014
  • ISBN: 9780804171557
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

The Girl Who Loved Camellias

The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

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: $35.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Julie Kavanagh

Julie Kavanagh trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School, and is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton. She has worked as ballet critic of The Spectator; Arts Editor of Harpers & Queen; and London Editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She is married to the ex-Royal Ballet dancer, now dance film maker, Ross MacGibbon, and has two sons.

Also by Julie Kavanagh

Feelings Deck for Kids
Rudolf Nureyev
See all

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