On this day in ...... 1824, Rose Alphonsine Plessis was born in Normandy, France. She found work in a Paris dress shop at age 15, but within a year had launched a career as a popular courtesan, renaming herself Marie Duplessis (left). Among the men with whom she was connected was the younger Alexandre Dumas; he wrote La Dame aux Camélias in 1848, a year after she died from tuberculosis at age 23. The novel provided the basis for a play, the opera La Traviata, and films typically titled Camille. Reminiscent of Duplessis' life, each features a young heroine who entertains, then coughs, and then, simply put, dies and dies and dies.
(Prior January 15 posts are here and here.)
