{"title":"Rachel M Brownstein","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"becoming-a-heroine-book-rachel-m-brownstein-9780140067873","title":"Becoming a Heroine","description":"Now back in print, this feminist classic explores how women define themselves and their lives in terms of novels. Many of the greatest novels in English have women as their protagonists, and women have always been the novel's most faithful readers. Why is it that fiction and women relate so intimately?","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49632888422673,"sku":"GOR002079258","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49908750319889,"sku":"CIN0140067876G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50808466047249,"sku":"GOR003353965","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0140067876.jpg?v=1750908697"},{"product_id":"tragic-muse-book-rachel-m-brownstein-9780822315711","title":"Tragic Muse","description":"The great nineteenth-century tragedienne known simply as Rachel was the first dramatic actress to achieve international fame. Composing her own persona with the same brilliance and passion she demonstrated on stage, she virtually invented the role of \"star.\" Rumors of her extravagant life offstage delighted the audiences who flocked to theaters in Boston and Paris, London and Moscow, to see her perform in the tragedies of Racine and Corneille. In Tragic Muse, Rachel M. Brownstein reveals the life of la grande Rachel and explores-at the boundary of biography, fiction, and cultural history-the connections between this self-dramatizing woman and her image. Born to itinerant Jewish peddlers in 1821, Rachel arrived on the Paris stage at the age of fifteen. She became both a symbol of her culture’s highest art and a clue to its values and obsessions. Fascinated with all things Napoleonic, she was the mother of Napoleon’s grandson and the lover of many men connected to the emperor. Her story-the rise from humble beginnings to queen of the French state theater-echoes and parodies Napoleon’s own. She decisively controlled her career, her time, and finances despite the actions and claims of managers, suitors, and lovers. A woman of exceptional charisma, Rachel embodied contradiction and paradox. She captured the attention of her time and was memorialized in the works of Matthew Arnold, Charlotte BrontË, George Eliot, and Henry James. Richly illustrated with portraits, photographs, and caricatures, Tragic Muse combines brilliant literary analysis and exceptional historical research. With great skill and acuity, Rachel M. Brownstein presents Rachel-her brief intense life and the image that was both self-fashioned and, outliving her, fashioned by others. First published by Knopf (1993), this  book will attract a broad audience interested in matters as wide ranging as the construction of character, the cult of celebrity, women’s lives, and Jewish history. It will also be of enduring interest to readers concerned with nineteenth-century French culture, history, literature, theater, and Romanticism. Tragic Muse won the 1993 George Freedley Award presented by the Theater Library Association.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49634567422225,"sku":"GOR004090545","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50626972156177,"sku":"CIN0822315718VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51842764538129,"sku":"NIN9780822315711","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51845112201489,"sku":"CIN0822315718G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0822315718.jpg?v=1763481883"},{"product_id":"american-born-book-rachel-m-brownstein-9780226823065","title":"American Born","description":"An incisive memoir of Rachel M. Brownstein’s seemingly quintessential Jewish mother, a resilient and courageous immigrant in New York.    When she arrived alone in New York in 1924, eighteen-year-old Reisel Thaler resembled the other Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe who accompanied her. Yet she already had an American passport tucked in her scant luggage. Reisel had drawn her first breath on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1905, then was taken back to Galicia (in what is now Poland) by her father before she turned two. She was, as she would boast to the end of her days, “American born.”    The distinguished biographer and critic Rachel M. Brownstein began writing about her mother Reisel during the Trump years, dwelling on the tales she told about her life and the questions they raised about nationalism, immigration, and storytelling. For most of the twentieth century, Brownstein’s mother gracefully balanced her identities as an American and a Jew. Her values, her language, and her sense of timing inform the imagination of the daughter who recalls her in her own old age. The memorializing daughter interrupts, interprets, and glosses, sifting through alternate versions of the same stories using scenes, songs, and books from their time together.     But the central character of this book is Reisel, who eventually becomes Grandma Rose—always watching and judging, singing, baking, and bustling. Living life as the heroine of her own story, she reminds us how to laugh despite tragedy, find our courage, and be our most unapologetically authentic selves.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745357046033,"sku":"NGR9780226823065","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0226823067.jpg?v=1750694151"},{"product_id":"tragic-muse-book-rachel-m-brownstein-9780394574516","title":"Tragic Muse","description":"The great nineteenth-century tragedienne known simply as Rachel was the first dramatic actress to achieve international fame. Composing her own persona with the same brilliance and passion she demonstrated on stage, she virtually invented the role of star. Rumors of her extravagant life offstage delighted the audiences who flocked to theaters in Boston and Paris, London and Moscow, to see her perform in the tragedies of Racine and Corneille. In \u003ci\u003eTragic Muse\u003c\/i\u003e, Rachel M. Brownstein reveals the life of \u003ci\u003ela grande Rachel\u003c\/i\u003e and explores--at the boundary of biography, fiction, and cultural history--the connections between this self-dramatizing woman and her image.\u003cbr\u003eBorn to itinerant Jewish peddlers in 1821, Rachel arrived on the Paris stage at the age of fifteen. She became both a symbol of her culture's highest art and a clue to its values and obsessions. Fascinated with all things Napoleonic, she was the mother of Napoleon's grandson and the lover of many men connected to the emperor. Her story--the rise from humble beginnings to queen of the French state theater--echoes and parodies Napoleon's own. She decisively controlled her career, her time, and finances despite the actions and claims of managers, suitors, and lovers. A woman of exceptional charisma, Rachel embodied contradiction and paradox. She captured the attention of her time and was memorialized in the works of Matthew Arnold, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, and Henry James.\u003cbr\u003eRichly illustrated with portraits, photographs, and caricatures, \u003ci\u003eTragic Muse\u003c\/i\u003e combines brilliant literary analysis and exceptional historical research. With great skill and acuity, Rachel M. Brownstein presents Rachel--her brief intense life and the image that was both self-fashioned and, outliving her, fashioned by others. First published by Knopf (1993), this book will attract a broad audience interested in matters as wide ranging as the construction of character, the cult of celebrity, women's lives, and Jewish history. It will also be of enduring interest to readers concerned with nineteenth-century French culture, history, literature, theater, and Romanticism. \u003ci\u003eTragic Muse\u003c\/i\u003e won the 1993 George Freedley Award presented by the Theater Library Association.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51438547271953,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51438547304721,"sku":"GOR014280859","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0394574516.jpg?v=1750975871"},{"product_id":"becoming-a-heroine-book-rachel-m-brownstein-9780670154432","title":"Becoming a Heroine","description":"Now back in print, this feminist classic explores how women define themselves and their lives in terms of novels. 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