Camille: The Lady of the Camellias [Mass Market Paperback]

Alexandre Dumas Fils (Author), Edmond Gosse (Translator), Toril Moi (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2004

With a new introduction, this Signet Classic is the only available paperback edition of Camille, the instantly-famous story of passion versus class that remains as timeless as love itself.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Signet Classics (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451529200
• ISBN-13: 978-0451529206
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #159,937 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Dumas, Alexandre

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Among The Better Selections In The Field Of 'Minor Classics', November 22, 2005

By 

Notnadia (Currently upstairs.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Camille: The Lady of the Camellias (Mass Market Paperback)

Camille is that rarest of all literary creations: a readable, enjoyable classic. This novel tells a good story about the sometimes tragic and scandalous and sometimes joyous life and fortunes of one Marguerite Gautier, a Parisian courtesan, and her lover Armand. The pace in this book doesn't drag, isn't too long, and rises well to the exact conclusion a reader anticipates. This is a frank, even sexually bold sort of novel for its period, and demonstrates again that the nineteenth-century French were willing to delve into subject areas their English counterparts were not. The avenues the romantic entanglements in Camille take combine with other elements to give this tale a more modern feel than most novels of two centuries ago. It's not great literature (in fact it's barely above a well-written romance novel) but it's definitely not bad reading material, either. Three and a half stars is what I'd plant on this work.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only the greatest classics last, May 12, 2009

By 

Maria Diaz (Florida, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Camille: The Lady of the Camellias (Mass Market Paperback)

As a learner of Spanish, I listened to the book on tape in Spanish as part of a class assignment. To enhance understanding we were assigned to read along in English from a copy the instructor had reserved in the school library. I loved the story so much and it increased my understanding of the Spanish audio. So, with 8 of us sharing the same copy, I decided to purchase my own copy which I have proudly added to my library. It is well written, the characters are interesting and the plot is terrific. A must read.

2.0 out of 5 stars I'm more Victorian than he is., September 16, 2011

By 

Kenneth Robert Lockridge (Frederick, MD, US) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Camille: The Lady of the Camellias (Mass Market Paperback)

I found myself sympathetic to Mr. Hugo-Fils because he was apparently born to such a woman, and I guess he also had an affair with such a woman as well. His point that we ought to love all people and "have a heart" is well taken, and in our generation, while the dominant modern view of morality (relativistic subjectivism) prevents us from even feeling any disdain, violence on TV and in movies has cauterized our natural empathy to the point that we tend to ignore anyone not like us rather than wishing them well or even helping them in their distress. The moral development of the main character (if she is the main character, and the narrator or his co-narrator the male lover of the story are not, which is a bit murkey since we go back and forth between their perspectives a lot) is at first a good thing to see, but devoid of "the permanent things" such as placing an importance upon God and/or why we exist, which might have given her the insight to see that her final decision to go back into the life of prostitution was wrong. The character who relates most of the story, the male lover, is so bent by infatuation that at one point he contemplates killing Camille so that no others may have her. That's true love. This point of view seems unreformed throughout the book with his constant digging at her when he doesn't get what he wants, and what he wants is not only faithfulness but real domination. In the end, it certainly may have been him who did kill her, albeit of natural causes. I found this book dark, disturbing and depressing, and did not see in it the redemptive quality that Verdi gave it in the opera La Traviata.