To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette - Hardcover

Erickson, Carolly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688073018 ISBN 13: 9780688073015

Publisher: William Morrow & Co, 1991

Synopsis

Describes Marie Antoinette's childhood in Vienna and her marriage to Louis XVI and the political climate of France during her husband's reign

About this title

About the Author:

Distinguished historian Carolly Erickson is the author of Rival to the Queen, The Memoirs of Mary Queen of Scots, The First Elizabeth, The Hidden Life of Josephine, The Last Wife of Henry VIII, and many other prize-winning works of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel The Tsarina's Daughter won the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Historical Fiction. She lives in Hawaii.

From Publishers Weekly:

This smoothly written biography concentrates on social history, although Erickson ( Bonnie Prince Charlie ) also details the political and economic background of 18th-century France. Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) was raised the daughter of Empress Maria Theresa in the Viennese court of the Hapsburgs, at whose lavish balls and fetes as many as 10,000 guests might dine. But Versailles, where she reigned after marrying King Louis XVI of France, glittered even more, and Erickson recreates its life aptly, describing the elaborate clothes, the duties of courtiers, the rigid etiquette. While the queen's education had equipped her for the role of royal hostess, she was ill-prepared to deal with the intrigues surrounding her. At first timid, fearful and passive, Antoinettesic gradually grew brittle and hardened by "a constant surfeit of pleasures." The author believes the queen had only one extramarital love, a Swedish nobleman named Axel Fersen. And she argues that Antoinette, condemned to death by revolutionaries, finally showed courage and dignity: her last words were an apology to her executioner for accidentally stepping on his foot. Although the book does not add a great deal of new information, it is a highly readable account.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow & Co
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0688073018
• ISBN 13: 9780688073015
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384