The Truth About Cora Pearl

Cora Pearl was Queen of the Paris courtesans during France's hectic, ill-fated Second Empire. The biographies and articles about her (almost entirely written by men) are lecherous and trivial. On her death The Times accorded her a short, spiteful and inaccurate biography. The Dictionary of National Biography is hardly less inaccurate. In this well-informed and fascinating biography Polly Binder sets out to reveal the truth about this daring and independent Englishwoman who captured the imagination of Paris Society - a society which created her and then tried its best to destroy her. Born in Victorian poverty to a family of musicians, Cora was drugged and brutally raped at the age of 13 by a middle-aged paedophile. Her indomitable spirit carried her to Paris where she soon became a leading courtesan, captivating a series of wealthy noblemen (her 'chain of gold') beginning with the Duc de Rivoli and finally becoming the mistress of Prince Napoleon ('Plon-Plon'). Cora stayed on during the Franco-Prussian War and the long Siege of Paris, turning her mansion into a hospital and spending her fortune caring for wounded soldiers (having first sent her beloved horses to safety). In her heyday she made and spent millions. She was the toast of the Jockey Club, a renowned hostess, friend of Worth, Offenbach and Gustave Doré, a superb rider, a careful book-keeper, a lover of practical jokes, and very English. Harlot and heroine. It is surely time to reappraise the career of this remarkable woman, born a century before her time. With 8 pages of black-and-white photographs. Jacket illustrations -- Front: Cora Pearl (BBC Hulton Picture Library); Back: Costume worn by Cora Pearl in Orphée aux enfers, 1867 (from a coloured print at the Martinet Gallery, Opera, Paris).