Caroline Elizabeth Weber (born 1969) is an American author. She is a professor of French and comparative literature at Barnard College within Columbia University. Her book Proust's Duchess was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography.
Weber was born in 1969.[1] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in literature (summa cum laude) from Harvard University and her PhD in French literature from Yale University.[2]
After earning her PhD, Weber joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania as an assistant professor of Romance languages.[3] While at the University of Pennsylvania, she authored Terror and its Discontents: Suspect Words and the French Revolution[4] and co-edited Fragments of Revolution with Howard G. Lay.[5]
After seven years at the University of Pennsylvania, Weber joined the faculty at Columbia University as a professor of French and comparative literature.[6] While there, her book Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the French Revolution was published in 2007 and described Marie Antoinette's life starting from her arrival from Austria into France.[7] The biographical novel focused on Marie Antoinette's control over her image through her autonomy of fashion.[8]
While conducting research for her book Proust's Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin-de-Siècle Paris, Weber discovered one unknown and one lost essay by Marcel Proust about Parisian high society.[9] As she was sifting through Élisabeth Greffulhe's personal archive, Weber discovered an unfinished and unpublished essay by Proust from 1902 to 1903 titled "The Salon of the Comtesse Greffulhe."[10] Greffulhe's husband had ordered her to not publish the essay for its vulgar contents, which she agreed to in fear of being beaten.[9] Weber used these essays to trace the lives of three high-society female models for the Duchesse de Guermantes, from childhood to adulthood, in In Search of Lost Time, Proust's novel in seven volumes.[11] Upon publishing the book, Weber was named a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography[12] and received the 2019 French Heritage Society Literary Award.[13]
Weber is married to economist Paul Romer. Their wedding occurred in 2018, the morning Romer accepted his Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.[14]
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