Used book – The Beautiful World: The Story of Anna Labrousse, Maid, Michel Peyramaure

This is the almost true story (Anna Labrousse is very much like Michel Peyramaure's grandmother, who had a similar fate) of a young peasant girl from Corrèze thrown into the bustling Paris of the 1880s: popular Paris, bourgeois Paris, artistic Paris - that of the Goncourts, Huysmans, Maupassant, Zola, François Coppée, and the Impressionists. An extravagant time, a small world - the "beau monde" of money, glory, and every convenience - perfectly suited to dazzle and corrupt an innocent provincial girl. But Anna had too much natural honesty and integrity to lose her soul there... Without betraying his taste for History, Michel Peyramaure here enriches an already considerable body of work; and he renews it by focusing on an era so close that it is still present in our memory and sensitivity. Our family albums and our museums are full of the moving images of that time.