Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour

Author: Nancy Mitford

Publisher: New York Review of Books

Published: 2012-05-09

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1590175301

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When Madame de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, no one expected her to retain his affections 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 delightfully candid 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 increasingly overcome with class conflict. With a fiction writer’s felicity, Mitford restores the royal mistress and celebrates her as a survivor, unsurpassed in “the art of living,” who reigned as the most powerful woman in France for nearly twenty years.

Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour

Author: Evelyne Lever

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2003-09

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780312310509

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In this biography, historian Evelyne Lever chronicles the extraordinary life of the most famous and influential mistress of Louis XV: Jeanne-Antoinette de Pompadour - a bourgeois girl of questionable parentage who would rise to the highest ranks of French society and maintain a twenty-year relationship with Louis XV.

Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour

Author: Christine Pevitt

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780802140357

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This biography of the legendary mistress of King Louis XV offers dramatic insight into the life of one of the most enchanting, powerful, and feared women to grace the world's stage. Groomed from an early age to assume the role of a rich man's mistress, Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson underwent several transformations before she caught the heart of the king himself. Although accustomed to the king's extramarital relationships, the court was shocked at the sudden ascension of the low-born Mademoiselle Poisson. The newcomer, however, wasted no time in establishing herself as the king's sole confidante and, ultimately, his indispensable partner in affairs of state. The critically acclaimed author of Philippe, Duc d'Orleans, Christine Pevitt Algrant traces Madame de Pompadour from her modest beginnings in early-eighteenth-century Paris to her reign as the undisputed mistress of Versailles. Filled with photographs, and evocative and insightful in its telling, Madame de Pompadour is a seductive portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential women of the age.

The Portraits of Madame de Pompadour
The Portraits of Madame de Pompadour

Author: Elise Goodman

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 9780520217942

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"An immensely eloquent tour de force, demonstrating the complex and often contradictory position of women in both intellectual and visual culture. Goodman examines Pompadour as an icon of court culture who simultaneously represents sexuality and the life of the mind. The paintings are the visual record of a remarkable and self-conscious fashioning of femininity." --Dympna Callaghan, author of Feminist Companion to Shakespeare "Elise goodman's stimulating and richly illustrated study recovers the visual record of women's place in the French Enlightenment. She traces a trend, engineered as much by the women themselves as by the artists who painted them, in which learning joins beauty to create a new iconography of female portraiture." --Susan S Lanser, author of Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice.

The Fortune Hunters
The Fortune Hunters

Author: Charlotte Hays

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2007-08-07

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1429917431

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From Madame de Pompadour, the famed mistress of Louis XV, to Pamela Harriman, who married into the English aristocracy and the American plutocracy, there is a rich history of women who have found glamour and wealth in the arms of a billionaire. But contrary to what you may think, fortune hunting is no idle pursuit. Like diving for treasure, it's a real job. Some women strive to be CEOs; others prefer to wed them. You'll meet today's dazzling successes in this book. What kind of woman does it take to make the Midas marriage? Exploring the lives of the great fortune hunters of our day, reporter and former gossip columnist Charlotte Hays answers this tantalizing question. You'll learn about the South Carolina woman who took a trip around the world with a shadowy shipping magnate, only to meet and marry a philandering marquis. You'll see what methods these women use to lure their powerful men, including one playful fortune seeker who, at a very high-society soirée, hurled a piece of bread at her intended beau, starting a food fight. You'll meet the New York socialite who remarried so quickly after a divorce, her ex claimed she was a bigamist. What are their recipes for riches? Can a genuinely nice woman pursue this career? What does love have to do with it? With original interviews and photos, Hays casts a light on the determination, skill, and---yes, sometimes---ruthlessness that have shaped some of the most successful---and lucrative---unions of our time.

Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette

Author: Evelyne Lever

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2001-09-24

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 9780312283339

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A biography of the French queen explores the intrigue surrounding her life from her birth, through her unhappy marriage, her lavish life at Versailles, to the events leading up to her death by beheading during the French Revolution.