You can run out of colorful adjectives trying to describe Julie d'Aubigny. She was, according to history, exquisite in appearance, a graceful and superb fencer, a sublime singer, a swashbuckling duellist, and lover of men and women, famous and cloistered — and that’s just the beginning.
Australian young adult author Kelly Gardiner has written her first novel for grownups about a character who seems to leave no adult passion untested. It’s called Goddess, and Gardiner tells NPR’s Scott Simon that some people find it hard to believe that d'Aubigny was a real person, because her life was so remarkable, “but yes, she really did live.”
French author Theophile Gautier wrote a novel based on d’Aubigny in 1835 – it’s called Mademoiselle de Maupin, and it’s online at Project Gutenberg.