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 âroaring twentiesâ, 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.
Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction
Part 1: Art and Illness
1 Marie Bashkirtseffâs Quest for Glory: the Nice Years and After
âEpilogue
2 âOrdered Southâ: Katherine Mansfield in Menton
âEpilogue
Part 2: High Life on the Riviera
3 Fact and Fiction: Alice Williamsonâs Monte Carlo
âEpilogue
4 Bronislava Nijinska: The Ballets Russes Years
âEpilogue
5 The Riviera and the Rich: Rebecca Westâs The Thinking Reed (1936)
âEpilogue
Part 3: The Mediterranean Idyll
6 Rebirth in Saint-Tropez: Coletteâs Break of Day
âEpilogue
7 An Invented Childhood: Honoria Murphy in Antibes
âEpilogue
8 Flavours of the South: the Culinary Revolutions of Elizabeth David and Julia Child
âEpilogue
Selective Bibliography Index
All interested in womenâs travels and travel literatures of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially feminine writings and the social and cultural history of the French Riviera.