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TITLE DEED HOW DID CELEBRATED BOOKS GET THEIR NAMES? Alexandre Dumas fils's La Dame aux Camlias

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From: The Sunday Telegraph London
Date: 20050911
Author:GARY DEXTER

THE CHARACTER of Marguerite Gautier, the "Lady with the Camellias'' in Dumas's six-hankie novel of 1848 - the book which inspired La traviata - was taken directly from the life of the early 19th-century Parisian courtesan Marie Duplessis, who became Dumas's lover for a short time between 1844 and 1845. During her brief, consumptive life, Marie's penchant for camellias (and dukes) was well- known; in the novel she wears white camellias for 25 days each month and red for the remaining five, in what is surely some kind of sexual traffic-light system. The choice of title had another influence. In ...

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