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Book Summary and Reviews of The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas Fils

The Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas Fils

The Lady of the Camellias

by Alexandre Dumas Fils

  • Published:
  • Jun 2013, 240 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The landmark novel that inspired Verdi's opera La Traviata, in a sparkling new translation.

"One of the greatest love stories of all time," according to Henry James, and the inspiration for Verdi's opera La Traviata, the Oscar-winning musical Moulin Rouge!, and numerous ballets, stage plays (starring Lillian Gish, Eleonora Duse, Tallulah Bankhead, and Sarah Bernhardt, and films (starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Rudolph Valentino, Isabelle Huppert, and Colin Firth), The Lady of the Camellias itself was inspired by the real-life nineteeth-century courtesan Marie Duplessis, the lover of the novel's author, Alexander Dumas fils.

Known to all as "the Lady of the Camellias" because she is never seen without her favorite flowers, Marguerite Gautier, the most beautiful, brazen, and expensive courtesan in all of Paris. But despite having many lovers, she has never really loved—until she meets Armand Duval, young, handsome, and hopelessly in love with her.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Liesl Schillinger's translation is notable for the fact that it succeeds in dusting off and invigorating the text without slipping into the contemporary idiom. This story, which sounded a little dated in the previous translations, can now be read with an urgency that seems wholly modern." —The New York Review of Books

This information about The Lady of the Camellias was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

Alexandre Dumas Fils

Alexandre Dumas Fils (1824–1895) was the son of the famous novelist Alexandre Dumas. He published many novels, and after the success of the dramatic version of The Lady of the Camellias, he became equally prolific as a playwright.

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