Book review: The Mistress Of Paris

IN 1848, the Year of Revolutions, little Emilie-Louise Delabigne began her life in the worst slum in Paris, the illegitimate daughter of a laundress-turned-prostitute.

Growing up on the streets whilst her mother entertained her clients, she learned her own trade early whilst working first as a poorly paid shop assistant and then as a bar girl in one of the racy new brasserie de femmes that catered to the male taste for pretty young women.

In 1878, a promising young writer named Emile Zola was researching the background to a novel which he wished to set in the Parisian demi-monde.

Delabigne invited him to one of her dinner parties and he repaid her kindness by immortalising her as the stupid and venal Nana.

If Catherine Hewitt’s well-researched and annotated biography has a fault, it is that, like Delabigne herself, she sometimes glosses over the reality of how the self-invented Comtesse Valtesse de la Bigne earned her living.

Nevertheless, she has written a handsome boudoir book.

The Mistress Of Paris

Catherine Hewitt

Icon Books, £20;

ebook, £8.79