Farewell, My Queen: A Novel - Rilegato

Thomas, Chantal

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0807615145 ISBN 13: 9780807615140

Casa editrice: George Braziller, 2003

Riassunto

Agathe-Sidonie Laborde, Marie Antoinette's reader, recounts her memories of living at Versailles during the final days of the French revolution.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Chantal Thomas is Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, and a specialist in eighteenth-century literature.

Product Description:

A woman whose function it once was to read books aloud to Marie Antoinette is haunted by the memory of her last days at the French court of Versailles, when Louis XVI's magnificent palace succumbed to the irrepressible forces of revolution. Now exiled in Vienna, Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and, overcome with nostalgia and remorse, discovers the full measure of her fascination with the Queen she served. Madame Laborde takes the reader within the palace, meticulously reconstructing the 14th, 15th, and 16th of July 1789feverish days when the servants have disappeared and many of the courtiers are fleeing. Versailles' miniature universe, sparkling with every outward appearance of happiness and beauty, is brilliantly juxtaposed with the chaos that erupts. We witness the unraveling of the palace's dawn-to-dusk ritual and the rising panic of the court as Versailles edges closer and closer to collapse. With the revolutionaries virtually at the gates of the palace, Madame Laborde herself flees the night of the 16th, escaping with members of the once-powerful de Polignac family. Transporting us to revolutionary France with the knowledge and insight of an historian and with the skill of a consummate storyteller, Thomas evokes this historical moment more powerfully than any historical analysis can.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: George Braziller
• Data di pubblicazione: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0807615145
• ISBN 13: 9780807615140
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 239