cover image My Blue Notebooks Pa: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan

My Blue Notebooks Pa: The Intimate Journal of Paris's Most Beautiful and Notorious Courtesan

Liane De Pougy, Liane De Pougy. Jeremy P. Tarcher, $14.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-1-58542-156-5

The life of Liane de Pougy was like the plot of an X-rated fairy tale: a celebrated courtesan of the belle epoque, she danced at the Folies-Berg re and in St. Petersburg married a Romanian prince, had erotic entanglements with important bohemians and capped it all off by becoming a nun. She also kept a journal from 1919 to 1941, My Blue Notebooks, in which she candidly recorded her stormy friendships (particularly with poet Max Jacobs), her affairs (particularly with Nathalie Barney) and other adventures in inter-war Paris. Translated from the French and edited by Diana Athill in 1979, the book is now back in print for the first time in years. (May 1)