Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France's Belle Epoque

Kate Cambor received her Ph.D. in history from Yale University. She has written for The American Scholar and The American Prospect, among other periodicals. Cambor lives in New York City. This is her first book.

They were the children of Frances most celebrated men of nineteenth-century letters and science, the celebrity heirs and heiresses of their day. Their lives were the subject of scandal, gossip, and fascination. Léon Daudet was the son of the popular writer Alphonse Daudet. Jean-Baptiste Charcot was the son of the famed neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, mentor to a young Sigmund Freud. And Jeanne Hugo was the adored granddaughter of the immortal Victor Hugo. As France readied herself for the dawn of a new century, these childhood friends seemed poised for greatness.

In Gilded Youth, Kate Cambor paints a portrait of a generation lost in upheaval. While France weathered social unrest, violent crime, the birth of modern psychology, and the dawn of World War I, these three young adults experienced the disorientation of a generation forced to discover that the faith in science and progress that had sustained their fathers had failed them. Cambor captures the hopes and disillusionments of those who were destined to see the golden world of their childhood disappearand the universal challenges that emerge as the dreams of youth collide with the realities of experience.

“Kate Cambors Gilded Youth reads like a Balzac novel. The reader is enchanted by young Charcot and by Victor Hugos granddaughter, and comes to loathe the odious Léon Daudet, archetype of French anti-Semites. This book is at once a marvelous narration and a dark vision of the anxieties of familial influence.”Harold Bloom

“Gilded Youth is the indispensable companion to Roger Shattucks classic The Banquet Years. Drawn with grace, sympathy, and shining intelligence, the characters in Kate Cambors group portrait are more than engaging. To know them is to understand how their timea time of great promise and unsurpassed beautygave way to a century of unending destruction.”Patricia OToole, author of The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His Friends, 1880-1918

“Gilded Youth offers a fascinating insight into the long shadows cast by the famous upon their children. The lives of Léon Daudet, Jeanne Hugo, and Jean-Baptiste Charcot are proof that an exceptional heritage can be as much a burden as a blessing. Kate Cambor has written a remarkable book.”Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

“Gilded Youth is a mesmerizing account that blends biography and history of the highest order. Cambor combines a scholars deep knowledge of French society and politics with a novelists grasp of psychological nuance. The result is a story about how the most urgent dispositions of the human heart can be shaped by history.”Christine Stansell, author of American Moderns: Bohemian New York and the Creation of a New Century

Kate Cambor received her PhD in history from Yale University. She has written for The American Scholar and The American Prospect, among other periodicals. Cambor lives in New York City. This is her first book.