Grandes Horizontales
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A01=Virginia Rounding
Author_Virginia Rounding
Category=DNBH
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Product details
- ISBN 9780747568599
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 19 Jul 2004
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The lives and legends of four women are examined in this fascinating book, all representatives of the golden age of the French courtesan. In the reign of Emperor Napoleon III the opulent and pampered demi-monde became almost indistinguishable from the haut-monde, with mythical reputations growing up around its most glittering and favoured celebrities. Marie Duplessis became the prototype of the virtuous courtesan when Alexandre Dumas Fils portrayed her in La dame aux Camellas. Apollonie Sabatier put men of letters at ease amidst the bawdy talk of her salon. The Russian Jew La Paiva appeared intent to prey on rich young men of Paris. The English beauty who called herself Cora Pearl was another 'foreign threat', with her athletic physique, sixty horses and ability 'to make bored men laugh'. Virginia Rounding disentangles myth from reality in her lively, thought-provoking study. Nineteenth-century Paris comes to life and so do its most distinguished and declasse inhabitants.
Virginia Rounding is a social and sexual historian living in London. This is her first book.
