Description
Book SynopsisDestination for artists and convalescents, playground of the rich, site of foreign allure, the French Riviera has long attracted visitors to its shores. Ranging through the late nineteenth century, the Belle Epoque, the ‘roaring twenties’, and the emancipatory post-war years, Rosemary Lancaster highlights the contributions of nine remarkable women to the cultural identity of the Riviera in its seminal rise to fame. Embracing an array of genres, she gives new focus to feminine writings never previously brought together, nor as richly critically explored. Fiction, memoir, diary, letters, even cookbooks and choreographies provide compelling evidence of the innovativeness of women who seized the challenges and opportunities of their travels in a century of radical social and artistic change.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction Part 1: Art and Illness 1 Marie Bashkirtseff’s Quest for Glory: the Nice Years and After Epilogue 2 ‘Ordered South’: Katherine Mansfield in Menton Epilogue Part 2: High Life on the Riviera 3 Fact and Fiction: Alice Williamson’s Monte Carlo Epilogue 4 Bronislava Nijinska: The Ballets Russes Years Epilogue 5 The Riviera and the Rich: Rebecca West’s The Thinking Reed (1936) Epilogue Part 3: The Mediterranean Idyll 6 Rebirth in Saint-Tropez: Colette’s Break of Day Epilogue 7 An Invented Childhood: Honoria Murphy in Antibes Epilogue 8 Flavours of the South: the Culinary Revolutions of Elizabeth David and Julia Child Epilogue Selective Bibliography Index
