Books by Veronica Buckley
Christina, Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric
Not unlike the elusive figure played by Greta Garbo, the real Queen Christina stood among the most flamboyant and controversial figures of the seventeenth century. All of Sweden could not contain her ambition or quench her thirst for adventure. Freed from her crown, she cut a breathtaking path across Europe -- spending madly, seeking out a more majestic throne, and stirring up trouble wherever she went. With a dazzling narrative voice and unerring sense of the period, Veronica Buckley goes beyond historical myth to breathe life into an extraordinary woman who set the world on fire and became an icon of her age -- a time of enormous change when Europe stood at the crossroads of religion and science, antiquity and modernity, war and peace.
This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.
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The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon
Françoise d’Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden’s seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family’s fortunes, and Françoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe.
At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former roué now grievously deformed by rheumatism—“a sort of human Z,” as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Françoise quickly became its most prized ornament.
After Scarron’s death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King’s splendid mistress, Athénaïs de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Françoise’s life, but was fatal to the temperamental Athénaïs herself, with the King soon turning his attentions to the graceful governess. Françoise was raised to the nobility as Madame de Maintenon—and, unofficially, “Madame de Maintenant,” the lady of the moment. The acclaimed biographer Veronica Buckley traces the extraordinary story of Françoise’s progress from pauper child to salonnière to the compromised position of Louis’s secret wife and uncrowned Queen. An absolute ruler, Louis turned away his many other mistresses to live with Françoise only, trusting her as his closest confidante and remaining in love with her for forty years.
Sparkling with the irresistible wit of contemporary chroniclers such as Madame de Sévigné, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant colors, The Secret Wife of Louis XIV paints a portrait of Europe in an age of violent change, and the Sun King’s France in the process of becoming its modern self.
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Twilight of the Romanovs: A Photographic Odyssey Across Imperial Russia
by Veronica Buckley, Philipp Blom
The lives of the tsars and their subjects from 1855 to 1918, told through rare archival photographs The Russian Empire was among the most mysterious of the world’s great powers, profoundly torn between a rural population living almost medieval lives and industrial and social change in the cities. The tsar’s gigantic realm struggled with the advent of modernity and with its own internal contradictions between Asia and Europe, faith and science, different ethnic groups, and the divergent interests of the aristocracy, the middle classes, the urban workers, and the rural poor: a continent of contradictions from abject poverty to fairy-tale wealth captured by authors from Tolstoy to Chekhov, from Gogol to Gorky.
Twilight of the Romanovs opens a door into the world of pre-revolutionary Russia using original photographs taken during the last decades of Romanov rule. They include remarkable color images created using an early three-color-plate technique that brings the remote past to life. Our companions on this journey include the Scottish photographer William Carrick, Americans George Kennan and Murray Howe, the German-Russian Carl Bulla, Sergey Produkin-Gorsky, and the writers Leonid Andreyev and Anton Chekhov, together with many anonymous others.
These photographs are snapshots of a vanished world, yet they reveal a surprising continuity: despite the subsequent revolution, faces, buildings, and landscapes still resonate with those who see them a century and more later. 360 illustrations, 114 in color
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Seven Sisters Captives and Rebels in Revolutionary Europe's First Family
A spirited, poignant history of the seven daughters of the great Empress Maria Theresia—including Queen Marie Antoinette of France—bringing their stories to life as they balanced dynastic duty and personal defiance in a time of revolutionary turmoil
“Others make war; you, happy Austria, marry.”
This unofficial dictum had kept the Habsburgs at the peak of power for centuries, but by 1764, the dynasty was in a precarious position. After a difficult accession and two lengthy wars, the Empress Maria Theresia faced enormous debts, restive subjects, and shaken political ties. True to Habsburg tradition, she sought the remedy in marriage alliances, and her arsenal was full: her seven daughters Marianna, Marie Christine, Elisabeth, Carolina, Josepha, and Antonia were to serve as her pawns in the ruthless game of eighteenth-century dynastic politicking.
Delivered to the grandest or dingiest courts in Europe, they made their difficult and even dangerous way: Marianne the seeker; the grande dame Marie Christine; Elisabeth, the malicious, disfigured beauty; fractious and wayward Amalie of Parma; Caroline of Naples, Napoleon’s relentless enemy; the tragic bride Josepha; and Antonia, youngest of the seven, sacrificial offering to the gods of revolution, better known to history as Marie Antoinette.
Meticulously researched and animated by the sisters’ own memoirs and diaries and the almost daily letters traversing the continent, Seven Sisters reveals the drama and comedy in these exceptional yet all too human lives. It is a vivid portrait of a brilliant world collapsing in a fearful time.
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$38.00