The Lady of the Camellias
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
"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.
“Marguerite and Armand are the kind of bright, self-destructive young things we still read about in magazines, watch on-screen, or brush up against today.”
—Liesl Schillinger, from the Note on the Translation
For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Alexandre Dumas, fils
Alexandre Dumas, fils (1824–1895) was a French writer and son of the famous novelist of the same name. He was born in Paris and formally educated at the Institution Goubaux and the Collège Bourbon. His earliest novel, Aventures de quatre femmes et d'un perroquet was published in 1847, followed by Césarine and his most notable work, La Dame aux Camélias in 1848. Despite his father’s towering legacy, the young Dumas made a name for himself as an award-winning author and playwright.
Read more from Alexandre Dumas, Fils
The Lady of the Camellias Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Clemenceau Case Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Classics of French Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lady of the Camellias: Classic of French Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Works of French Literature: 90+ Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Plays, Philosophical Essays… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Son of Clemenceau: Historical Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Collected Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Son of Clemenceau Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCamille: The Lady of the Camellias Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to The Lady of the Camellias
Related ebooks
Derues (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThomas Hardy: Selected Prose, Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmaury by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Mouth of Hell by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKarl Ludwig Sand (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fencing Master by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Three Musketeers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catherine Blum by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssays in Little Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMy Memoirs. Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Friends of Voltaire Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsActé by Alexandre Dumas (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWoman and Puppet, Etc Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTatterdemalion: "All the peoples think that if they win the world will be better" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo Poets Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuotes and Images from Celebrated Crimes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssential Novelists - Alexandre Dumas: historical novels of high adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTold Again: Old Tales Told Again - Updated Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Outcast and The Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear, 1925-38 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cloister and the Hearth - A Tale of the Middle Ages Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Study Guide for Virginia Woolf 's "The Duchess and the Jeweller" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThree Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Complete Works of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Big Book of Best Short Stories - Specials - France: Volume 3 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Maison Tellier Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Study Guide for Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best Short Stories of Katherine Mansfield Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMadame de Staël Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMartin Guerre (Annotated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Literary Fiction For You
The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anna Karenina: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm Thinking of Ending Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Pulitzer Prize Winner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Nigerwife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lady Tan's Circle of Women: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Salvage the Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Lady of the Camellias
13 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Melodramatic and with characters that aren’t all that likeable, but yet somehow an enjoyable read, perhaps because of the depth of the emotions, and how the book transports you to early 19th century France. Marguerite is a ‘kept woman’, one who trades her sexual favors to aristocratic old men for their money and lavish gifts. She keeps up an extravagant lifestyle while juggling suitors, which she can do without offending those involved too much as long as she maintains a sense of decorum about it. Armand is a young bourgeoisie who falls madly in love with her, and despite not having the economic means to pay her expenses, gets petty and jealous of her other men and tries to take her from it all, to the alarm of his father. The book is restrained and doesn’t give us detail for the amorous relations, and yet it’s refreshingly frank about them, both of which were good things. While it’s a completely different world that these characters inhabit, when they go through the ups and downs of their affair, we recognize emotions and actions that are timeless. It drags on a bit towards the end, but the story of sacrifice and love is touching.Quotes:On affairs, this from Marguerite:“Men, instead of being satisfied in obtaining for a long time what they scarcely hoped to obtain once, exact from their mistresses a full account of the present, the past, and even the future. As they get accustomed to her, they want to rule her, and the more one gives them the more exacting they become. If I decide now on taking a new lover, he must have three very rare qualities: he must be confiding, submissive, and discreet.”On chance:“One day a young man is passing in the street, he brushes against a woman, looks at her, turns, goes on his way. He does not know the woman, and she has pleasures, griefs, loves, in which he has no part. He does not exist for her, and perhaps, if he spoke to her, she would only laugh at him, as Marguerite had laughed at me. Weeks, months, years pass, and all at once, when they have each followed their fate along a different path the logic of chance brings them face to face. The woman becomes the man’s mistress and loves him. How? Why? Their two existences are henceforth one; they have scarcely begun to know one another when it seems as if they had known one another always, and all that had gone before is wiped out from the memory of the two lovers. It is curious, one must admit.”
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Perfect to read in bed when fighting a cold. Who needs Harlequin romances when Alexdanre Dumas fils is writing.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Almost a guilty pleasure. Dumas' novel is smutty and noble, trashy and sentimental, tragic and overwrought. Nineteenth century chick lit - I enjoyed it! I suspect it would make a good weepie - I need to check out La Traviata...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Written by Alexandre Dumas' son (who is also, actually, named Alexandre Dumas - don't get confused), "La Dame aux Camelias" is the story of the most sought after courtesan in Paris, and the young man who falls in love with her. This book was average - I liked the unfolding of events and the writing style, even if it got a bit too flowery for my liking at many points. I wasn't taken in at all by the romance, though. Our suffering hero Armand is a fool, and he behaves ridiculously. He goes from a sensible man to a besotted puppy after he meets Marguerite. Marguerite herself is selfish and arrogant. She is constantly changing her mind, and unabashedly expects all men to fall deeply in love with her. Both of the two seemed impulsive, weak, and dramatic.I couldn't like these characters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I purchased this from the library book sale. I had not heard of this story and missed the author connection - his father wrote Count of Monte Christo and the Three Musketeers. This is a great story of love, redemption, jealousy, and societal judgment. The ending is not happy, but the story worth reading. I'd have loved to sit down and have a drink and coversation with Dumas.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The narrator buys a courtesan's old book at a whim. Some time later, the man who gave her the book comes looking for it, and shares with the narrator their tale of love and sorrow. They had but a few short months together before her debts and his family's need to maintain their reputation came between them. I hadn't realized how closely the movie Moulin Rouge was based on this--the broad outline and many of the visual details (like the courtesan visiting her true love one last time, pale and waxy under her black veil) are the same. That said, Ewan McGregor's character was far less frustrating (nay, hateful!) than Armand Duval, the "hero" of this tale. But the courtesan of this tale is even more affecting than in the bombastic movie. I was helplessly crying near the end, distraught at Marguerite's courage and how little she hoped for (in vain, as it turns out).
"...I am tired out with seeing people who always want the same thing; who pay me for it, and then think they are quit of me. If those who are going to go in for our hateful business only knew what it really was they would sooner be chambermaids. But no, vanity, the desire of having dresses and carriages and diamonds carries us away; one believes what one hears, for here, as elsewhere, there is such a thing as belief, and one uses up one's heart, one's body, one's beauty, little by little; one is feared like a beast of prey, scorned like a pariah, surrounded by people who always take more than they give; and one fine day one dies like a dog in a ditch, after having ruined others and ruined one's self."
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I adore complicated, tortured stories of difficult love affairs if they don't descend into the sacarine or trite. Dumas fils does not disappoint with this fictionalized account of his own fractured love affair. Nothing burns quit so much as the passions that pain us in our youth. Although it's going on nearly 200 years old it wears well and has been mined for inspiration for books stage and film by lesser writers since. Sniff a camellia and heave a sad sigh for lost love.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The story is very similar to Manon Lescaut which is referenced a couple of times. But contrary to that tale, the characters are real, their behavior plausible and the story grips your emotion. The reader for this French edition does a superb job and had me crying during the final stages of the book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A quick read. While it's charming enough, it didn't leave too much of an impression on me afterwards. I read "Camille" because I heard it was the basis for Verdi's opera "La Traviata." I must say it makes a better opera. That said, if you have a free afternoon, it's enjoyable.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read the Le Livre de Poche (French) 1966 edition of this book, not the one indicated. Although intended as a Catholic morality tale, it's well-written & fun to read (of course, it's tragic). Jettisoning the "save one's immortal soul" reading prompt and replacing it with socio-economic & feminist critique makes for a more illuminating reading experience. Good detailed depiction of the catch-22 circumstances of a 19th century "kept woman" and her "respectable" lover.