The Flying Aspidistra 2009 ©
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V ictorine Meurent, Manet, A Woman With No Clothes On, V R Main, VR Main, fiction, novel, art, history, romance, sex, Paris, France, amazon.co.uk, Waterstones, writer, writing Edouard Manet, Dejeuner sur L’herbe, Olympia, scandal, 19th century, nineteenth century, painting, obsession, Guardian, Socialist Worker, novelist
V R Main graduated in English and Comparative Literature and has a PhD in Elizabethan
drama from the Shakespeare Institute.
She has worked as a journalist for the BBC
and a lecturer at Nigerian and British universities, as well as in adult and further
education colleges.
She has two daughters.
V R Main on the painting:
VR Main, centre, Barnes Library 2008
'I cannot recall when I first saw Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe: it seems that it has always been with me. I was drawn to the image of the powerful, dominant female figure whose gaze challenged the spectator.
Fascinated, I began researching the painting and its singular model. It was the discrepancy
between her representation by art historians as a loose, drunken woman and her determination
to become an artist against the odds of her gender and class that inspired me to
write the novel.”
A Woman with No Clothes On won the Trafalgar Prize for work in progress in 2005.
VR Main, second from right, Waterstone’s Local Authors event 2008
