Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era

Moorehead, Caroline

ISBN 10: 0061684422 / ISBN 13: 9780061684425

Published by Harper Perennial, 2010

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 0061684422-3-26501868

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Dancing to the Precipice: The Life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin, Eyewitness to an Era
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication Date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0061684422
• ISBN 13: 9780061684425
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 19 ounces

About this title

Synopsis

“[A] remarkable biography….Moorehead deftly wields periods detail…to tell the story of a captivating woman who kept her sense of self amid the vicissitudes of politics.”

—Vogue

 

From acclaimed biographer Caroline Moorhead comes Dancing to the Precipice, a sweeping chronicle of the remarkable life of Lucie de la Tour du Pin—“an astute, thoroughly engaging biography of a formidable woman” (Boston Globe) who, over the span of some 80 years, was witness to, and often a participant in the major social upheavals of eighteenth-century French history.

This definitive French Revolution biography brings a turbulent era to life through the eyes of one of its most resilient observers, chronicling:

• Life at Versailles: An insider’s account of the glittering, decadent, and treacherous court of Louis XVI in the final years before the fall of the French monarchy.
• Surviving the Terror: A harrowing narrative of how Lucie navigated the most dangerous days of the French Revolution, witnessing friends and family arrested and sent to the guillotine.
• Escape to America: The remarkable story of an aristocratic family building a new life as farmers in upstate New York, grappling with a rugged landscape and new democratic ideals.
• The Bourbon Restoration: A firsthand perspective on the return of the French kings and the complex social landscape of post-Napoleonic Paris, including friendships with figures like Talleyrand and the Duke of Wellington.

About the Author

Caroline Moorehead is the New York Times bestselling author of the Resistance Quartet, which includes A Bold and Dangerous Family, Village of Secrets, and A Train in Winter, as well as Human Cargo, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. An acclaimed biographer, she has written for the New York Review of Books, The Guardian, and The Independent. She lives in London and Italy.