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Title details for Proust's Duchess by Caroline Weber - Available

Proust's Duchess

How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris

by Caroline Weber
Suzanne Toren
Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
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2 of 2 copies available
PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • A brilliant look at 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. “Weber has done a remarkable job of bringing to life…a world of culture, glamour and privilege.” —The Wall Street Journal  

Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe—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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    May 22, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780525588931
      • File size: 860650 KB
      • Duration: 29:53:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 12, 2018
      The great strength of this literary history from Weber (Queen of Fashion) lies in its sheer accumulation of detail, which paints a granular picture of the ultra-wealthy milieu that provided the subject matter for Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Weber focuses on three real-life social leaders Proust merged into the character of the Duchesse of Guermantes. Through these three women—Comtesse de Chevigné, Vicomtesse Greffulhe, and Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus—Weber exposes the high society world of France during the 1870s to early 1890s. The grandeur might impress from afar, but Weber reveals the darker side of a culture that contributed little to the larger society while spending lavishly on its own whims. Greffulhe’s husband, for example, used one of his footmen solely to deliver daily bouquets of orchids to his dozens of paramours, while she indulged in custom clothing that included a muff crafted of blue jay feathers, a floor-length fox stole, and a mauve brocade gown woven with palm fronds. The final impression is one of a topical warning against the accumulation of vast wealth for its own sake. Readers will be impressed when they reach the end of this lengthy book, nearly every page of which offers factual riches, served up with precise and witty prose.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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