Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the

Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris

From the author of the acclaimed Queen of Fashion--a brilliant look at the glittering world of turn-of-the-century Paris through the first in-depth study of the three women Proust used to create his supreme fictional character, the Duchesse de Guermantes.

GeneviÃ¨ve HalÃ©vy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de AdhÃ©aume de ChevignÃ©; and Ã‰lisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siÃ¨cle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style." All well but unhappily married, these women sought freedom and fulfillment by reinventing themselves, between the 1870s and 1890s, as icons. At their fabled salons, they inspired the creativity of several generations of writers, visual artists, composers, designers, and journalists. Against a rich historical backdrop, Weber takes the reader into these women's daily lives of masked balls, hunts, dinners, court visits, nights at the opera or theater. But we see as well the loneliness, rigid social rules, and loveless, arranged marriages that constricted these women's lives. Proust, as a twenty-year-old law student in 1892, would worship them from afar, and later meet them and create his celebrated composite character for The Remembrance of Things Past.
Country USA
Brand Knopf
Manufacturer Knopf
Binding Hardcover
ItemPartNumber Illustrated
Color White
ReleaseDate 2018-05-22
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780307961785

Country	USA
Brand	Knopf
Manufacturer	Knopf
Binding	Hardcover
ItemPartNumber	Illustrated
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2018-05-22
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780307961785

Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris

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