Chasing the Dream

This is the first English translation of Chasing the Dream, Liane de Pougy's first novel, published in 1898 when she was 29. It is the story of a courtesan in search of true love which repeatedly proves ungraspable - insaisissable. Josiane de Valneige is young, beautiful and rich. She is also exhausted, depressed and despairing. Although scores of wealthy Parisians have been her lovers, she has loved none in return. And despite Josiane's fame as one of the fin de siècle's grandes horizontales, fêted in every gossip column, the journey to success has revealed a flaw in her character: she has a heart. Her real self is never engaged. It is not enough to be universally loved. She needs, she yearns, to give her heart.

Born in 1869 near the town of Tours she married Armand Pourpe, a naval officer, after becoming pregnant by him while still at her convent school, aged 16. She soon left her violent husband to go to Paris. Their son, born 1886 was brought up by his grandmother. She was a dancer at the Folies Bergere in the 1890s and had occasional acting parts but it was in the demi-monde she rose to fame. As a runaway teenage mother, celebrity courtesan, and in later life a princess, a fundraiser for disabled children and, finally, a Dominican lay sister, Liane de Pougy led an extraordinary life. She died in Lausanne in December 1950, aged 81.