[2] According to her autobiography, she was a lovable child whose mother doted on her and protected her from an abusive stepfather in her early childhood and teen years.

In doing so, she wanted to have her name removed from the register of prostitutes[2] At first, she faced many rejections and continued with her life of a courtesan with the help of her friends and one Dr. Adolph whom she loved.

Although lost for many years, Jana Verhoeven found them in France—and with the help of Alan Willey and Jeanne Allen, translated and annotated them.

[6] Her friend Dumas père helped her revise a stage version of her best-selling novel Les Voleurs d'or (1857).

"[8] According to a review of her third set of memoirs, the widowed de Chabrillan confronted numerous difficulties: "There were powerful men who tried to crush Céleste's spirit with no concern for the dire financial consequences of their actions."

While she emphasizes the personal hurdles she faced trying to prove herself to others, she also bears witness to the struggles of a female autodidact to achieve literacy and to improve her social standing in nineteenth-century France.

Although Céleste took great pride in the twelve novels, thirty plays and operettas, and dozen poems and patriotic lyrics she authored, they never provided her with a stable income and, sadly, she struggled financially at several points in her life.

As she notes in the last line of her memoirs, her greatest joy was the memory of "my illustrious protectors from the Association of Stage Authors, who accepted me as one of their own and granted me a pension until the end of my life.

She renamed herself Valtesse de la Bigne, enjoyed great fames in 1870s Paris, and took the pen name Ego when she published Isola.

[6] She explains how she earned the moniker in her first set of memoirs when a suitor declared that winning over her was more difficult than conquering Mogador of Morocco.

At one point in her life before marriage to Lionel, Celeste wanted to adopt a baby girl but was unable to do so because of her profession as a courtesan.