Marie Bashkirtseff was of one of the most extraordinary women of the 19th century. Her Journal (originally comprising some 20,000 hand-written pages but pared down to a few hundred for publication) was a cause cElEbre after her death and continues to be an inspiration to the Women's Movement to this day. It also inspired such great writers as AnaIs Nin and Katherine Mansfield among many others.

Born into an aristocratic family in a village in Ukraine the family soon settled in France, first in Nice and later in Paris. Taught entirely by tutors Marie spoke multiple languages, played...