The Courtesans: The Demi-Monde In Nineteenth-Century France
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Beneath the glittering gaslit boulevards of nineteenth-century Paris, a shadowy world of glamour, scandal, and calculated seduction thrived — the world of the grandes horizontales, the celebrated courtesans who wielded extraordinary power over emperors, artists, and aristocrats alike. Joanna Richardson's The Courtesans: The demi-monde in nineteenth-century France chronicles the lives of these remarkable women — from the legendary Cora Pearl to La Paiva — who, born into poverty or obscurity, clawed their way to the heights of Second Empire society through beauty, wit, and fierce ambition, reshaping the cultural and social landscape of an era in the process. Richardson brings the precision of a meticulous historian and the narrative flair of a gifted storyteller to this vivid portrait of a vanished world, drawing on contemporary memoirs, letters, and press accounts to reconstruct lives that were at once celebrated and condemned. The book stands as a landmark work of social history, illuminating the contradictions of bourgeois Victorian morality, the commodification of femininity, and the surprising agency these women exercised within the rigid confines of a patriarchal society. For anyone fascinated by the hidden currents of power beneath the belle époque's polished surface, Richardson's account poses a provocative question: were these women victims of their age, or its most audacious masters?
Author: Joanna Richardson
Format: Hardback
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Beneath the glittering gaslit boulevards of nineteenth-century Paris, a shadowy world of glamour, scandal, and calculated seduction thrived — the world of the grandes horizontales, the celebrated courtesans who wielded extraordinary power over emperors, artists, and aristocrats alike. Joanna Richardson's The Courtesans: The demi-monde in nineteenth-century France chronicles the lives of these remarkable women — from the legendary Cora Pearl to La Paiva — who, born into poverty or obscurity, clawed their way to the heights of Second Empire society through beauty, wit, and fierce ambition, reshaping the cultural and social landscape of an era in the process. Richardson brings the precision of a meticulous historian and the narrative flair of a gifted storyteller to this vivid portrait of a vanished world, drawing on contemporary memoirs, letters, and press accounts to reconstruct lives that were at once celebrated and condemned. The book stands as a landmark work of social history, illuminating the contradictions of bourgeois Victorian morality, the commodification of femininity, and the surprising agency these women exercised within the rigid confines of a patriarchal society. For anyone fascinated by the hidden currents of power beneath the belle époque's polished surface, Richardson's account poses a provocative question: were these women victims of their age, or its most audacious masters?