Signet Classics Camille

Marguerite Gautier is the most beautiful, brazen—and expensive—courtesan in all of Paris. Despite being ill with consumption, she lives a glittering, moneyed life of nonstop parties and aristocratic balls and savors every day as if it were her last.

Into her life comes Armand Duval. Young, handsome, and recklessly headstrong, he is hopelessly in love with Marguerite, but not nearly rich enough. Yet Armand is Marguerite’s first true love, and against her better judgment, she throws away her upper-class lifestyle for him. But as intense as their love for each other is, it challenges a reality that cannot be denied.…

This Signet Classics version is the only available paperback edition of Camille, a story as old as time and as timeless as love itself.

Translated by Sir Edmond Gosse, with an Introduction by Toril Moi

Includes Photos

Camille's byname refers to the camellias she would carry as a signal of her availabilty. She gives up her former way of life as a courtesan after falling in love with a young man. She soon returns to it rather than ruin his life by her association with him. This tale of love, passion and tragedy is an enduring one.

Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–95) was the illegitimate son of a Belgian seamstress and the famed novelist Alexandre Dumas. He was educated in several Parisian private schools and the Collège Bourbon. The elder Dumas acknowledged him as his natural son and for some time made him his constant companion. In 1847, the younger Dumas published his first novel, Adventures of Four Women and a Parrot, followed a year later by Camille (The Lady of the Camellias), and ten other novels over the next decade. Following the great success of the dramatic version of Camille, Dumas was gradually drawn away from the novel to the stage. He was elected to the French Academy in 1874 and continued to produce a long line of successful plays until his death.

Toril Moi is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies at Duke University. Widely known for her work on feminist theory, she is the author of Sexual/Textual Politics; What Is a Woman?; and Simone de Beauvoir: The Making of an Intellectual Woman. The editor of The Kristeva Reader and French Feminist Thought, she recently published a book on Henrik Ibsen.