The Lady of the Camellias By Alexandre Dumas, first published in 1848, and subsequently adapted for the stage.

The Lady of the Camellias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852. The play was an instant success, and Giuseppe Verdi immediately set about putting the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La Traviata, with the female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, renamed Violetta Valéry.

The lead heroine is Marguerite Gautier, a young beautiful courtesan who is a "kept woman" by counts and dukes -- men of "Fashionable Society". She meets a young middle class lover Armand Duval who does the unpardonable thing of falling jealously in love with her and breaking all convention of what's expected between a courtesan and her admirers. He, of course, has no way of sustaining the standard of living which she is accustom.

Marguerite, despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, and the suffering of the two lovers is rendered touchingly.