Items related to La Grande Therese: The Greatest Swindle of the Century
Therese Humbert's salon captivated fin-de-siecle Paris. Her dazzling wealth, as the illegitimate daughter of an American billionaire, was fabled. But it was all a hoax. La Grande Therese looks at her life and times.
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Review:
Hilary Spurling's masterful biography The Unknown Matisse: 1869-1908 mentioned the little-known story of the woman who brought financial disgrace on his family. Now she has seen fit to devote an entire book--slim though it is--on this fascinating subject. A hundred years ago the fabulously wealthy Therese Humbert and her husband lived like royalty on a fashionable street in Paris where they were waited on by Matisse's parents-in-law. Therese let it be known that she had had an even wealthier American lover and paid for everything by borrowing money on the expectation that she would receive a legacy from his will. Annoyingly, his children kept disputing the will and the case dragged on for years. But the Humberts kept on living it up, socialising with the great and the good and running up debts all the while. In this wittily piquant morality tale Spurling describes the spectacular rise and fall of a cunning French peasant girl with a wicked imagination and irresistible powers of persuasion who worked up a hoax that fooled an entire society. Therese sadly died in disgrace and without a penny, but her story is as rich and entertaining as anything by Dickens or Zola. -- Lilian Pizzichini
About the Author:
Hilary Spurling won the Whitbread Biography and Book of the Year 2005 for her biography of Henri Matisse, the product of 15 years' work. Her biography of Ivy Compton-Burnett won the Heinemann and Duff Cooper prizes. She has been a theatre and book critic for the Spectator, Observer and Telegraph, and lives in London.
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- PublisherProfile Books
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 1861972202
- ISBN 13 9781861972200
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages144
- Rating
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