Alexandre Dumas fils published La Dame aux Camélias in 1848 at the age of twenty-three, drawing on a real love affair to create one of the most touching stories in French literature. Marguerite Gautier, a celebrated Parisian courtesan, falls genuinely in love with the young Armand Duval, but social convention and consumption conspire against them.
The novel later inspired Verdi’s opera La Traviata and numerous stage adaptations. Romantic, tragic, and surprisingly unsentimental in its social observation, this public-domain text is available as a free EPUB download.