Description

about the author

I am a professor of French & Comparative Literature at Barnard College, Columbia University, where I specialize in 18th & 19th-century French literature, history, & culture. My newest book, PROUST’S DUCHESS (Knopf, 2018), explores the fizzy intersection of aristocracy, celebrity, & artistic genius in fin-de-siecle Paris. The book involved 7 years’ worth of detective work in the unpublished private papers of its three heroines, the real-life society doyennes upon whom Marcel Proust modeled his fictional Duchesse de Guermantes, the reigning goddess of the Parisian nobility in IN SEARCH OF LAST TIME. My previous books are QUEEN OF FASHION: WHAT MARIE ANTOINETTE WORE TO THE REVOLUTION (2006) & TERROR & ITS DISCONTENTS (2003). I have written extensively for the mainstream press & for fashion magazines as well as for scholarly publications; my aim in all my work is to make my material accessible & engaging to the reader. The image that appears above as my main author photo is actually a portrait of me painted by my amazingly talented friend Brad Livingstone Black.