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"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. Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffuhle--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle 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"--
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Subjects
Social life and customs, Aristocracy (Social class), Sources, Intellectual life, Women, Biography, Contemporaries, New York Times reviewed, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women, HISTORY / Europe / France, LITERARY CRITICISM / European / FrenchPeople
Laure de Chevigné (1859-1936), Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Elisabeth Greffulhe comtesse (1860-1952), Geneviève Straus (1849-1926)Places
Paris, Paris (France), FranceTimes
19th centuryEdition | Availability |
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1
Proust's duchess: how three celebrated women captured the imagination of fin-de-siècle Paris
2018
in English
- First edition.
0307961788 9780307961785
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Book Details
Table of Contents
Edition Notes
"This is a Borzoi Book published by Alfred A. Knopf"--Title page verso.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 595-697) and index.
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The Physical Object
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marc_openlibraries_sanfranciscopubliclibrary MARC recordPromise Item
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Feedback?December 18, 2022 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
August 7, 2021 | Edited by New York Times Bestsellers Bot | Add NYT review links |
May 24, 2019 | Created by MARC Bot | import new book |