Laura Claridge is the author of biographies of the painters Tamara de Lempicka and Norman Rockwell, as well as books on British Romanticism, Modernism, gender, and psychoanalytic theory. A popular international lecturer, she was professor of English literature at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis, for eleven years. She lives in New York City. First published by Bloomsbury in 2001, Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence is the first critical biography of the most extraordinary woman artist of the art-deco period. Born to Russian aristocrats in 1899, de Lempicka arrived in Paris in 1919 and was condemned by contemporary critics; the eighties saw a resurgence in of interest in her artistic accomplishments and her sexual proclivities. The Royal Academy held an exhibition of her work from 15 May to 30 August 2004.
'The definitive round-up of de Lempicka's ramshackle but riveting life' Sunday Times 'Claridge is a meticulous, scholarly and sympathetic biographer' Observer 'Lucid and interesting ... a well-deserved and sympathetic account of de Lempicka's life' Independent on Sunday