The Girl Who Loved Camellias: The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

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 caf s. 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."

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 08/12/2014
ISBN: 9780804171557
Pages: 320
Weight: 0.65lbs
Size: 8.26h x 4.88w x 0.43d

Review Citations: New York Times Book Review 10/26/2014 pg. 32