The Girl Who Loved Camellias

Author : Julie Kavanagh
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0804171556
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Girl Who Loved Camellias written by Julie Kavanagh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 cafés. 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.”

Author : Sarah Jio
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0452298393
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Camellia written by Sarah Jio and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-05-28 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Always and Blackberry Winter: “An intoxicating blend of mystery, history and romance, this book is hard to put down.”—Real Simple On the eve of World War II, the last surviving specimen of a camellia plant known as the Middlebury Pink lies secreted away on an English country estate. Flora, an amateur American botanist, is contracted by an international ring of flower thieves to infiltrate the household and acquire the coveted bloom. Her search is at once brightened by new love and threatened by her discovery of a series of ghastly crimes. More than half a century later, garden designer Addison takes up residence at the manor, now owned by the family of her husband, Rex. The couple’s shared passion for mysteries is fueled by the enchanting camellia orchard and an old gardener’s notebook. Yet its pages hint at dark acts ingeniously concealed. If the danger that Flora once faced remains very much alive, will Addison share her fate? Fans of Downton Abbey should rush to pick up this novel.

Author : Alexandre Dumas
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 72 pages
Book Rating : 4.VX/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Camille written by Alexandre Dumas and published by . This book was released on 1857 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : René Weis
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0198708548
Total Pages : 417 pages
Book Rating : 4.44/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Real Traviata written by René Weis and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: René Weis is a freelance author and a professor of English at UCL. He has a written on a wide variety of subjects, including Edith Thompson (of the infamous 'Thompson and Bywaters' murder case in the 1920s), the last Cathar insurgency in the Pyrenees in the Middle Ages, and a biography of Shakespeare. As a professional Shakespearian, he has published extensively on Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, his publications including editions of Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Henry IV Part 2, and an Oxford World Classics edition of the works of John Webster. A lifelong lover of opera, he also contributes regular pieces to the programmes for Royal Opera House productions.

Author : Julie Kavanagh
Publisher : Grove Atlantic
ISBN 13 : 0802149383
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Irish Assassins written by Julie Kavanagh and published by Grove Atlantic. This book was released on 2021-08-03 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant true crime account of the assassinations that altered the course of Irish history from the “compulsively readable” writer (The Guardian). One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially made surgeon’s blades. They put an end to the new spirit of goodwill that had been burgeoning between British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Ireland’s leader Charles Stewart Parnell as the men forged a secret pact to achieve peace and independence in Ireland—with the newly appointed Cavendish, Gladstone’s protégé, to play an instrumental role in helping to do so. In a story that spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris, New York, Cannes, and Cape Town, Julie Kavanagh thrillingly traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From the adulterous affair that caused Parnell’s downfall; to Queen Victoria’s prurient obsession with the assassinations; to the investigation spearheaded by Superintendent John Mallon, also known as the “Irish Sherlock Holmes,” culminating in the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas, The Irish Assassins brings us intimately into this fascinating story that shaped Irish politics and engulfed an Empire. Praise for Julie Kavanagh’s Nureyev: The Life “Easily the best biography of the year.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer “The definitive biography of ballet’s greatest star whose ego was as supersized as his talent.” —Tina Brown, award-winning journalist and author

Author : Marguerite Duras
Publisher : Pantheon
ISBN 13 : 0307801209
Total Pages : 129 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Lover written by Marguerite Duras and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2011-07-06 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international best-seller with more than one million copies in print and a winner of France's Prix Goncourt, The Lover has been acclaimed by critics all over the world since its first publication in 1984. Set in the prewar Indochina of Marguerite Duras's childhood, this is the haunting tale of a tumultuous affair between an adolescent French girl and her Chinese lover. In spare yet luminous prose, Duras evokes life on the margins of Saigon in the waning days of France's colonial empire, and its representation in the passionate relationship between two unforgettable outcasts. Long unavailable in hardcover, this edition of The Lover includes a new introduction by Maxine Hong Kingston that looks back at Duras's world from an intriguing new perspective--that of a visitor to Vietnam today.

Author : Emilio Sala
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 110724451X
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Sounds of Paris in Verdi's La traviata written by Emilio Sala and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Paris and its musical landscape influence Verdi's La traviata? In this book, Emilio Sala re-examines La traviata in the cultural context of the French capital in the mid-nineteenth century. Verdi arrived in Paris in 1847 and stayed for almost two years: there, he began his relationship with Giuseppina Strepponi and assiduously attended performances at the popular theatres, whose plays made frequent use of incidental music to intensify emotion and render certain dramatic moments memorable to the audience. It is in one of these popular theatres that Verdi probably witnessed one of the first performances of Dumas fils' La Dame aux camélias, which became hugely successful in 1852. Making use of primary source material, including unpublished musical works, journal articles and rare documents and images, Sala's close examination of the incidental music of La Dame aux camélias - and its musical context - offers an invaluable interpretation of La traviata's modernity.

Author : A G Mogan
Publisher : Independently Published
ISBN 13 : 9781651796054
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.5X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Daughter Of Paris written by A G Mogan and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-12-27 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who consumed Parisian high society in the 19th Century, and the inspiration behind masterpieces such as Alexandre Dumas Fils' The Lady with the Camellias and Verdi's Traviata, is one that overwhelms with its soul-searing tragedy.This peasant girl, who endured cruelty, abandonment, and the torment of a woman's lot in her time, clawed her way through the class and cultural strata of Paris from one rich man to another, with her sensational beauty lighting the way. Yet her beauty wasn't the only thing capturing hearts, but also her indefatigable spirit, unflappable honesty, and raw commitment to finding love, no matter the cost-an ideal that always seemed to elude her. Marie Duplessis was the courtesan who conquered her world as no other woman has, past or present. This is the story of a peasant girl who surpassed all suppressions her era imposed on its women, to become one of the most famous individuals 19th century Europe had ever known.

Author : Helen Sheehy
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 030748422X
Total Pages : 549 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Eleonora Duse written by Helen Sheehy and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2009-02-04 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new biography, the first in two decades, of the legendary actress who inspired Anton Chekhov, popularized Henrik Ibsen, and spurred Stanislavski to create a new theory of acting based on her art and to invoke her name at every rehearsal. Writers loved her and wrote plays for her. She be-friended Rainer Maria Rilke and inspired the young James Joyce, who kept a portrait of her on his desk. Her greatest love, the poet d’Annunzio, made her the heroine of his novel Il fuoco (The Flame). She radically changed the art of acting: in a duel between the past and the future, she vanquished her rival, Sarah Bernhardt. Chekhov said of her, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Looking at Duse, I realized why the Russian theatre is such a bore.” Charlie Chaplin called her “the finest thing I have seen on the stage.” Gloria Swanson and Lillian Gish watched her perform with adoring attention, John Barrymore with awe. Shaw said she “touches you straight on the very heart.” When asked about her acting, Duse responded that, quite simply, it came from life. Except for one short film, Duse’s art has been lost. Despite dozens of books about her, her story is muffled by legend and myth. The sentimental image that prevails is of a misty, tragic heroine victimized by men, by life; an artist of unearthly purity, without ambition. Now Helen Sheehy, author of the much admired biography of Eva Le Gallienne, gives us a different Duse—a woman of strength and resolve, a woman who knew pain but could also inflict it. “Life is hard,” she said, “one must wound or be wounded.” She wanted to reveal on the stage the truth about women’s lives and she wanted her art to endure. Drawing on newly discovered material, including Duse’s own memoir, and unpublished letters and notes, Sheehy brings us to an understanding of the great actress’s unique ways of working: Duse acting out of her sense of her character’s inner life, Duse anticipating the bold aspects of modernism and performing with a sexual freedom that shocked and thrilled audiences. She edited her characters’ lines to bare skeletons, asked for the simplest sets and costumes. Where other actresses used hysterics onstage, Duse used stillness. Sheehy writes about the Duse that the actress herself tried to hide—tracing her life from her childhood as a performing member of a family of actors touring their repertory of drama and commedia dell’arte through Italy. We follow her through her twenties and through the next four decades of commissioning and directing plays, running her own company, and illuminating a series of great roles that included Emile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Marguerite in Dumas’s La Dame aux camélias, Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, and Hedda in his Hedda Gabler. When she thought her beauty was fading at fifty-one, she gave up the stage, only to return to the theatre in her early sixties; she traveled to America and enchanted audiences across the country. She died as she was born—on tour. Sheehy’s illuminating book brings us as close as we have ever been to the woman and the artist.

Author : Sarah Jio
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101619996
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.95/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Morning Glory written by Sarah Jio and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-11-26 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestselling author of Always imagines life on Boat Street, a floating community on Seattle’s Lake Union, home to people of artistic spirit who for decades protect the dark secret of one startling night in 1959. Fleeing an East Coast life marred by tragedy, Ada Santorini takes up residence on houseboat number seven on Boat Street in search of inspiration and new opportunities. When she discovers a trunk left behind by Penny Wentworth, a young newlywed who lived on the boat half a century earlier, she is immediately drawn into this long lost story. Ever-curious, Ada longs to know her predecessor’s fate, but does not suspect that Penny’s mysterious past and her own clouded future are destined to converge...