Juliette Drouet
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Juliette Drouet, born Julienne Gauvain (Fougères, 1806 - Paris, 1883) was the mistress of Victor Hugo.
Orphaned from her mother a few months after birth, and her father the following year, she was raised by her uncle, René Drouet. She was educated in Paris in a religious boarding school. Around 1825 she became the mistress of sculptor James Pradier, who represented her in a statue symbolizing Strasbourg, at the place de la Concorde in Paris. They had a daughter together, Claire. On the advice of Pradier, she started a career of acting in 1829, initially in Brussels, then in Paris. She took at that time the name Drouet from her uncle.
In 1833, while playing the role of Princess Négroni in Lucrèce Borgia (see: Lucrezia Borgia) she met Victor Hugo. She abandoned her theatrical career afterwards to dedicate her life to her lover. For many years she lived cloistered, leaving home only in his company. In 1852, she accompanied him in his exile in Jersey, and then in 1855 in Guernsey. She wrote thousands of letters to him throughout her life, which testify to her writing talent according to Henri Troyat who wrote her biography in 1997.
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(French) [1]
[edit] References
- Simone de Beauvoir, Patrick O'Brian (Translator). The Coming of Age. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31443-X
- Juliette Drouet, Evelyn Blewer (Editor), Victoria Tietze Larson (Translator). My Beloved Toto: Letters from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo 1833-1882. State University of New York Press (June 2006) ISBN 0-7914-6572-1
- Graham Robb, 1999. Victor Hugo: A Biography. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31899-0
- Henri Troyat, 1997. Juliette Drouet: La prisonnière sur parole. Flammarion. ISBN 2-08-067403-X
