Enchantress: Marthe Bibesco and Her World - Hardcover

Sutherland, Christine

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374148147 ISBN 13: 9780374148140

Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1997

Synopsis

Profiles the life of Princess Marthe Bibesco of Romania, who became one of the most acclaimed international writers and intellectuals of her day

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Too much like her heroine, author Sutherland is so seduced by power and glamour that she inflates her subject's literary and historical significance. Sutherland (The Princess of Siberia, 1983; Monica, 1990) has spent most of her career chronicling the lives of oft-forgotten, aristocratic European women who have played a role in political and historical events. Her latest effort concerns Marthe Bibesco (18861973), Wallachian princess, author, confidante of countless heads of state, and jet-setter par excellence. From an early age, Bibesco was surrounded by men and women of power, money, and standing; she spent much of her adult life pursuing this vanishing troika in the postWW I decades. Daughter of the Romanian minister of foreign affairs, she entered an arranged marriage to a rich rake, and the two proceeded to take lovers and lead largely separate lives. Moving between Bucharest and Paris, her various country homes and palaces, and her various European watering holes and vacation destinations, Bibesco took up writing to fill an emotional void resulting from a loveless marriage, family deaths and suicides, and a general malaise caused by the end of aristocratic rule. After WW II she was even reduced to earning a living by writing to support her family in exile. At least this is the picture as presented by Sutherland. The problem is that Sutherland narrates these events without hazarding any ideas about Bibesco's literary or intellectual evolution. To her credit, she soberly dismisses some of Bibesco's many literary works as failures. And she argues that Bibesco could be seen as an early proponent of European unity. However, if this biography conveys one clear message, it is that there is a vast difference between Bibesco's aristocratic, conservative notions of Europeanism and more modern, egalitarian, and democratic views. Here historical events appear only as backdrops to the real focus of this disappointing narrative--designer clothing, fancy cars, Europe's haut monde, and jaded royal circles. (photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1902, Marthe Lavohary, a 16-year-old beauty, was married in Bucharest to Prince George Bibesco, the thoroughly spoiled and selfish son of the hereditary hospodar?governor?of Wallachia. Her devastating wedding night left her "obliterated." Although she would have many lovers, her relationships were more romantic, even intellectual, than physical. Spending her days far apart from Prince George, Marthe became a cosmopolitan socialite and notable author, with her base in Paris and her ancestral home, to which she repaired regularly, in Romania. Her admirers included a king of Spain, a crown prince of Germany, a British prime minister and a premier of France. Her books, written in French, won prizes and were the envy of rivals whose reputations have outlasted her own. Her now-forgotten potboiling novels, penned under pseudonyms when she needed money, were bestsellers. Witness to two world wars and writing until the end, she died in Paris at 87, nearly destitute. Yet her biography reads now like a faded operetta without music, and Sutherland (Maria Walewska) makes only a feeble attempt to breathe life into Princess Bibesco's writings. Sixty-five volumes of her gossipy manuscript diaries survive, along with such books as the travel memoir The Eight Paradises and the evocative Isvor: The Land of the Willow, about her province and its people. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0374148147
• ISBN 13: 9780374148140
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 318