Francine du Plessix Gray Rage and Fire

Annotation

This is a biography of the pioneer feminist, French author Louise Colet (1810-1876), incorporating aspects of mid-19th century European women's lives. She is best known as the greatest love of Gustave Flaubert, as one of his models for Emma Bovary, and as the recipient of some of Flaubert's most treasured letters. A mistress of Alfred de Vigny, Victor Hugo and Leconte de Lisle, she was known as "the muse" and presided over one of the most popular salons of mid-19th century Paris. What is less known is that at the apogee of her career she was a famous woman writer in France, a prolific author, fluent in poetry, fiction, historical essays and journalism (she won the Academie Francaise Poetry Prize four times). Louisa Colet was one of the first 19th-century authors to explore the historical causes of female alienation. She considerd many mid-19th century issues: the impact of the development of Bohemia; sexual conduct; the role of women in the salon and the oppression of women, to name but a few.