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Synopsis
One of history's most misunderstood figures, Marie Antoinette represents the extravagance and the decadence of pre-Revolution France. Yet there was an innocence about Antoinette, thrust as a child into the chillingly formal French court.
Married to the maladroit, ill-mannered Dauphin, Antoinette found pleasure in costly entertainments and garments. She spent lavishly while her overtaxed and increasingly hostile subjects blamed her for France's plight. In time Antoinette matured into a courageous Queen, and when their enemies finally closed in, Antoinette followed her inept husband to the guillotine in one last act of bravery.
In To the Scaffold, Carolly Erickson provides an estimation of a lost Queen that is psychologically acute, richly detailed, and deeply moving.
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About the Author
Distinguished historian Carolly Erickson is the author of Rival to the Queen, The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, The First Elizabeth, The Hidden Life of Josephine, The Last Wife of Henry VIII, and many other prize-winning works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Tsarina's Daughter won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction. She lives in Hawaii.
From Publishers Weekly
This smoothly written biography concentrates on social history, although Erickson ( Bonnie Prince Charlie ) also details the political and economic background of 18th-century France. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was raised the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa in the Viennese court of the Hapsburgs, at whose lavish balls and fetes as many as 10,000 guests might dine. But Versailles, where she reigned after marrying King Louis XVI of France, glittered even more, and Erickson recreates its life aptly, describing the elaborate clothes, the duties of courtiers, the rigid etiquette. While the queen's education had equipped her for the role of royal hostess, she was ill-prepared to deal with the intrigues surrounding her. At first timid, fearful and passive, Antoinettesic gradually grew brittle and hardened by "a constant surfeit of pleasures." The author believes the queen had only one extramarital love, a Swedish nobleman named Axel Fersen. And she argues that Antoinette, condemned to death by revolutionaries, finally showed courage and dignity: her last words were an apology to her executioner for accidentally stepping on his foot. Although the book does not add a great deal of new information, it is a highly readable account.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherSt. Martin's Griffin
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0312322054
- ISBN 13 9780312322052
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages384
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