Women Writing on the French Riviera
Travellers and Trendsetters, 1870-1970
Series: - Faux Titre, Volume: 442
Destination 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.
Rosemary Lancaster, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Western Australia, Chevalier des Palmes académiques, is the author of
Je Suis Australienne, Remarkable Women in France, 1880-1945 (2008) and
Poetic Illumination: René Char and his Artist Allies (2010).
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1 Marie Bashkirtseff’s Quest for Glory: the Nice Years and After
Epilogue
2 ‘Ordered South’: Katherine Mansfield in Menton
Epilogue
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
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
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
All interested in women’s travels and travel literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially feminine writings and the social and cultural history of the French Riviera.