The love affair as a work of art

Hofstadter "shows how these rediscovered documents [forgotten personal writing which has resurfaced in France] bear on the erotic lives of their writers, and how the fine French tradition of conducting love affairs developed as an art form....The romantic trajectory runs from Benjamin Constant and Mme. de Staël to the beautiful Mme. Récamier and her lover Chateaubriand; from George Sand and Alfred de Musset to Mme. de Caillavet and Anatole France; and it concludes with a touching portrait, based partly on still-unpublished sources, of the girl who became the model for Proust's Gilberte."--Jacket.