Comments | artaxastra: Help Me O Flist!

artaxastra

Help Me O Flist!

Jul 22, 2011 17:22

Years ago I read a fantastic historical novel about the life of the 19th century actress Rachel Felix, better known as just plain Rachel, one of the first superstars who was so famous she just went by one name. I cannot find this book again! Searching on Rachel Felix is not producing anything useful. Has anybody read this? Does anyone know what ( Read more... )

Comments 9

geonncannon July 22 2011, 22:02:15 UTC

All I can find is Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie-Française by Rachel Brownstein, but that says it's a biography. I'll see if I can find anything else! She sounds worth researching. :D

artaxastra July 22 2011, 22:06:37 UTC

I found that one too and put it in my Amazon cart just in case. It may be more to the point than the wonderful novel I remember, actually, as what I need is the story of one of her lovers and his escape from the Russian secret police in 1827. Which is before he met her, but I remember something about it in the book....

bessiemaemucho July 22 2011, 23:38:09 UTC

I did a WorldCat search for fiction on the subject of Rachel Felix and the only real hit was for a book called Rachel by Anne Powers.

There's no summary listed in WorldCat or on Amazon, though. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0709178719?tag=openlibr-20

Hope that helps? IDK, I can't find anything else about that particular title.

montebello July 22 2011, 23:42:12 UTC

That looks like a good candidate. http://books.google.com/books?id=9DF3AAAACAAJ&dq=rachel+anne+powers&hl=en&ei=ZQoqTs_3Ecrx0gGL4OTGCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA

"Some considered her an earthy spitfire with the morals of an alley cat. Others applauded her as a queen of the stage and called her France's greatest actress. Her affairs were the talk of Paris, her incandescent performances were the pride of a nation, her life was the stuff of dreams. Fascinating historical romance by the author of Eleanor."

artaxastra July 22 2011, 23:49:50 UTC

Thank you! That's it!

artaxastra July 22 2011, 23:49:36 UTC

Thank you! That's it!

montebello July 22 2011, 23:39:17 UTC

I can't find any novel. But searching on books.google.com revealed some free biographies, and searching on abebooks.com revealed a decent number of books.

bessiemaemucho July 22 2011, 23:52:37 UTC

Hurrah, library school was not for naught! You're welcome!

bessiemaemucho July 22 2011, 23:54:15 UTC

(I meant to post that as a reply in the appropriate place but apparently I didn't. Sigh, commenting is hard.)