Nana

Issued in 1880, this novel of the Rougon-Macquart series traces Nana Coupeau from a bit-part on the Paris boulevard stage to a life as the city's most expensive kept woman. A scandalous play that makes her notorious opens a career in which Count Muffat, the actor Fontan, and other men of the Empire lose fortune and dignity. The action moves between the theatre, Nana's apartments, and the racecourse. Appetite and bankruptcy are treated as social facts of the dying imperial order. It is a novel of the Second Empire demi-monde, not a biography of a historical actress.

Bound in red-brown cloth with a design in gold. Orange endleaves. Transparent plastic dust-jacket. Folio Press and J.M. Dent.