The Lady of the Camellias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois. Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias (French for ''the lady of the camellias'') because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating and unavailable for sex and a white camellia when she is available to her lovers.

The novel was subsequently adapted by Alexandre Dumas fils for the stage and became an instant success. Shortly thereafter, Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music in the 1853 opera La Traviata. Of all Dumas fils' theatrical works, The Lady of the Camellias is the most popular around the world. In some parts of the English-speaking world, sixteen versions of the play have been performed at Broadway theatres alone.