Muses : women who inspire

For centuries, Women have fascinated and inspired the greatest writers, painters, photographers, and musicians to create their most poignant works of art, and these muses are as many and varied as the artists themselves. From American model and photographer Lee Miller, who drove her mentor - the surrealist artist May Ray - to distraction, and almost to suicide ; to film director Josef von Sternberg's movie-star creation in the form of Marlene Dietrich ; or from Alice Liddell, the ten-year-old inspiration for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ; to painter and photographer Dora Maar, whose profound influence can be seen in her infamous lover Pablo Picasso's Weeping Woman series.

The lives and characters of these women were dissimilar in so many aspects, yet they all shared the ability to awaken fervor within some of the most significant artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and to influence the work of Their Pygmalions. Revealing the passionate relationship between the artist and his muse - from devotion to tormented obsession, and sometimes subjugation - author Farid Abdelouahab recounts the stories of thirty-two women who, through their temperament, beauty talent, and pure magnetism, enthralled society's artistic geniuses and inspired the creation of some of the greatest works of the pas centuries.