An Uncommon Woman - The Empress Frederick: Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm - Softcover

Pakula, Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684842165 ISBN 13: 9780684842165

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997

Synopsis

Recounts the life of daughter of Queen Victoria--the Empress Frederick--and her personal war against the antidemocratic, antifeminist forces during a revolutionary time in European history, from the mid-nineteenth century to the beginning of World War I. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Hannah Pakula is the author of The Last Empress, which was a New York Times notable book, The Last Romantic, which was called by Graham Greene the best biography and one of the three best books of the year, and An Uncommon Woman, which was a Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist. She lives in New York City.

From Booklist

Pakula, author of the brilliant biography of Queen Marie of Romania, The Last Romantic (1985), proffers a definitive biography of a historical figure well deserving of such a monumental treatment. Her new subject possessed impeccable credentials in the scheme of nineteenth-century European royalty: Princess Royal of Britain, then crown princess of Prussia, and finally German empress. Vicky, as she was called in the family, was the eldest child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and was also easily the cleverest of their vast brood. Her idealistic father arranged her marriage to the heir of the Prussian throne to spread liberal ideas to that reactionary country. The marriage went off as planned, and Vicky loved her handsome prince, Fritz, and he vice versa; they quickly grew to be partners in liberalism. But Vicky was never able to truly shake the foundations of the conservative Prussian monarchy, mainly because of Reich chancellor Prince Bismarck, her nemesis, but also because her husband was too ill and reigned too briefly (88 days) to make real changes. Adding injury to insult, her son, the Kaiser Bill we fought in World War I, reversed the little good Vicky had done in bringing notions of constitutionalism to an autocratic regime by trying to pretend his mother had never existed! Pakula plunges the reader deeply into European politics, but the water is not only fine, it is exhilarating. Brad Hooper

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0684842165
• ISBN 13: 9780684842165
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 704