A consistently absorbing story.A rewarding and illuminating book. New York Times

Religiously researched and gracefully written.Grunfeld will set a biographical standard for years to come. The Boston Globe

Augustus Rodin was not only the greatest sculptor but also one of the most remarkable personalities of modern times. Frederic V. Grunfelds exhaustive biography, the first in over fifty years, documents a lifetime of both artistic and personal struggleagainst poverty, against the conservative Salon, and
against an art establishment that for years denied him recognition. Rodins crucial love affair with his pupil, Camille Claudel, emerges here in all its tragic complexity, as do his relationships with the British painter, Gwen John, and the American-born duchess, Claire de Choiseul. Grunfeld also sheds new light on Rodins friendships with some of the most gifted writers and artists of the dayfrom Robert Louis Stevenson and George Bernard Shaw to Emile Zola and James McNeill Whistler.

Earphones Awards recipient Simon Vance was born in England and worked for the BBC for ten years as a radio news announcer and as a narrator for the Royal National Institute for the Blind in London. Besides narrating audiobooks, he is involved in numerous stage-acting projects in the United States and Europe.