Sarah: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt

By: Robert Gottlieb

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Synopsis: Everything about Sarah Bernhardt is fascinating, from her obscure birth to her glorious career--redefining the very nature of her art--to her amazing (and highly public) romantic life to her indomitable spirit. Well into her seventies, after the amputation of her leg, she was performing under bombardment for soldiers during World War I, as well as crisscrossing America on her ninth American tour. Her family was also a source of curiosity: the mother she adored and who scorned her; her two half-sisters, who died young after lives of dissipation; and most of all, her son, Maurice, whom she worshiped and raised as an aristocrat, in the style appropriate to his presumed father, the Belgian Prince de Ligne. Only once did they quarrel--over the Dreyfus Affair. Maurice was a right-wing snob; Sarah, always proud of her Jewish heritage, was a passionate Dreyfusard and Zolaist. Though the Bernhardt literature is vast, Gottlieb'sSarah is the first English-language biography to appear in decades. Brilliantly, it tracks the trajectory through which an illegitimate--and scandalous--daughter of a courtesan transformed herself into the most famous actress who ever lived, and into a national icon, a symbol of France.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:: 9780300168792
Related ISBNs:: 9780300141276
Publisher:: Yale University Press
Date of Addition:: 01/17/12
Copyrighted By:: Robert Gottlieb
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: Entertainment, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs, Religion and Spirituality
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.