Posts Tagged ‘Marie Duplessis’

Media Center: ‘Girl Who Loved Camellias’ by Julie Kavanagh

June 6th, 2013

WHO: Julie Kavanagh

WHAT: THE GIRL WHO LOVED CAMELLIAS:
The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

WHEN: Published by Knopf June 14, 2013

WHERE: Marie Duplessis lived in Paris

WHY:
“Thanks to a talented author, this tragedy is a pleasure to read…A thoroughly researched and fascinating account of Duplessis’s short life and lengthy legacy.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“Duplessis is a muse once again, this time
for an adept biographer who elegantly preserves her indelible story.

“Julie Kavanagh became intrigued with Marie Duplessis, a svelte, cultured young courtesan in Paris in the 1840s, while she was researching biographies of Ashton and Nureyev. Duplessis inspired The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas fils, and Verdi’s opera, La Traviata, and the more Kavanagh learned about Duplessis, ‘one of the great romantic muses,’ the more deeply she fell under her spell. Equipped with the treasures gleaned from persistent research and guided by empathy, Kavanagh tells the full, whirling story of how a poor, sexually abused Jacket photo‘peasant girl from Normandy’ turned herself into a cosmopolitan, free-spirited woman of culture and desire supported in style by high-society lovers.
“As ‘clever and observant’ as she was lithe and lovely, Duplessis not only spent her well-earned cash on the usual luxuries but also immersed herself in literature and the arts while igniting rivalries among her ‘protectors’ as she indulged her ‘sybaritic nature.’ Kavanagh is a warm, nimble portraitist, wryly chronicling the glittering if doomed realm of the courtesan while following Duplessis as she attains the heights of adoration only to fall to tuberculosis, dying at age 23.”
—Donna Seaman, in a starred review for BOOKLIST

“Kavanagh’s book is great fun.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS

Media Resources:
About the book | About the author |  Download the jacket or the author photo

Publicist for this title:
Kathy Zuckerman | 212-572-2105 | kzuckerman@randomhouse.com