Book Description

When Madame de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, no one expected her to remain in that preeminent position for long. A member of the bourgeoisie rather than an aristocrat, she was physically too cold for the carnal Bourbon King, and had so many enemies that she could not travel publicly without risking a pelting of mud and stones. History has loved her little better.

Nancy Mitford's biography re-creates the spirit of eighteenth-century Versailles with its love of pleasure and treachery. We learn that the Queen was a "bore," the Dauphin a "prig," and see France gradually succumbing to revolutionary conflict. With a novelist's felicity, Mitford restores grace and humanity to the royal mistress, celebrating her as a survivor, unsurpassed in the art of living, who reigned as the most powerful woman in France for nearly twenty years.

About Author

NANCY MITFORD (1904–1973) was born into the British aristocracy and, by her own account, brought up without an education, except in riding and French. She managed a London bookshop during the Second World War, then moved to Paris, where she began to write her celebrated and successful novels, among them The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, about the foibles of the English upper class. Nancy Mitford was also the author of four biographies: Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire in Love, The Sun King, and Frederick the Great.

Book Dimension :

length: (cm)20.2 　　　 　　　　　 　 width:(cm)12.6