Caroline Weber. (2018). Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Caroline Weber. 2018. Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Caroline Weber, Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018.

Caroline Weber. Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siecle Paris. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2018.

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1. • role: Author
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   • bioText: CAROLINE WEBER is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University; she has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton. She is the author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the Revolution (2006). She has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Financial Times, London Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, and New York magazine. She lives in New York City.
   • name: Caroline Weber

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Proust's Duchess

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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.

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1. • premium: False
   • source: The Wall Street Journal
   • content: "Rich with intimate details of [their] extraordinary lives. . . . Weber has done a remarkable job of bringing to life a world of culture, glamour and privilege."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Condé Nast Traveler
   • content: "Extraordinary. . . . Not only a serious work of scholarship but also a riveting triple biography of three rebellious women . . . the first 'it' girls, reinventing themselves as celebrities long before Instagram."
3. • premium: False
   • source: The Yale Review
   • content: "Engrossing and intelligent. . . . Skillfully guides readers through the heyday of fin-de-siècle France, unveiling its beauty and elegance, its cleverness and charm, but also its contradictions and inequities, its cruelty and wretchedness. . . . Both a delicious guilty-pleasure read and a penetrating, clear-sighted piece of literary commentary."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Vogue
   • content: "Dazzlingly well researched and compulsively readable."
5. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 1, 2017
     

     Genevieve Halevy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adheaume de Chevigne; and Elisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, Comtesse Greffuhle: three highest-of-high-society women used by Marcel Proust to create the Duchesse de Guermantes, who reigns over his magnum opus. From Barnard professor Weber (Queen of Fashion).Durst wraps up a spooky trilogy; Kenyon returns to the "Deadman's Cross" series

     Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

6. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     March 1, 2018
     A captivating triple biography reveals the women who inspired Marcel Proust's Duchesse de Guermantes.In his seven-volume In Search of Lost Time, Proust drew on his astute observations of Parisian high society: the dazzling glamour, effete customs, and, as he increasingly noted, superficiality and banality. Focusing on three alluring women who were objects of Proust's fascination, Weber (French and Comparative Literature/Barnard Coll.; Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution, 2006, etc.) portrays in rich detail a French aristocracy threatened by profound social and political change. Genevi've Hal'vy Bizet Straus (widow of the composer Georges Bizet); Laure de Sade, Comtesse Adh'aume de Chevign' (a descendent of the Marquis de Sade); and lisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, Vicomtesse Greffulhe were the grandes dames who fueled Proust's "dream of patrician elegance and grace." Each assiduously developed "a conscious strategy of self-promotion," honing a distinctive image to achieve recognition and admiration. lisabeth traded on her beauty, wearing only clothing "designed by her and for her." Laure, with a particular talent for self-aggrandizement and tireless indulgence for "wild nights" at the notorious Chat-Noir, made sure to publicize her Sadean lineage. Genevi've, who entertained wearing "silky, mauve peignoirs," had a reputation as "the neurasthenic queen of Montmartre." Each was married, unhappily, and strived for some measure of independence at a time when women "had the legal status of minors." As lisabeth wrote, "women are meant to be trophies, pretty possessions....Smiling, placid, charming. Not leaving the nest, staying in the aviary." Weber offers intimate details of their love affairs, betrayals, friendships, and rivalries; their worries over money and status; and their "grappl[ing] with mental illness and drug addiction." She recounts vividly the plush ambience, dress, and d'cor of their chteaux and palaces as well as the parties and salons peopled by royalty, artists, and writers who mesmerized the young, aspiring, impressionable Proust.A palpable, engrossing portrait of three extraordinary women and their tempestuous, fragile world.

     COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

7. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     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.

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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...

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

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