CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS, PUBLISHERS
Former series of M. Imbert de Saint-Amand’s historical works have depicted the great French historical epochs of modern times. The stirring events of the Revolution, of the Consulate and Empire, and of the Restoration period, ending with the July revolution of 1830 and the accession of Louis Philippe, are grouped around the attractive personalities of Marie Antoinette, the Empresses Josephine and Marie Louise, and the Duchesses of Angoulême and of Berry. The remarkable and uniform success of these works has induced the publishers to undertake the translation and publication of a previous series of M. de Saint-Amand’s volumes which deal with epochs more remote, but not for that reason less important, interesting, or instructive. The distinction of the cycle now begun with the “Women of the Valois Court” and ending with “The Last Years of Louis XV.,” is that, whereas in former series several volumes have been devoted to the historical events associated with each of the titular personalities to which they were closely related, in the present instance a more condensed method is followed. The color of the present series is more personal, and therefore more romantic, as is to be expected in the annals of a period during which the famous women of the French Court were not only more numerous but more influential than their successors of later times. The dawn of the modern era, chronicled in M. de Saint-Amand’s “Marie Antoinette and the End of the Old Régime” was the beginning of the extinction of the feminine influence that flourished vigorously in affairs of state from Marguerite of Angoulême to Madame Dubarry. It is the history of this influence that the author has graphically written in the four volumes now announced—“Women of the Valois Court,” “The Court of Louis XIV.,” and “The Court of Louis XV.,” and “The Last Years of Louis XV.”
The first volume is devoted to Marguerite of Angoulême and Catherine de’ Medici and their contemporaries at the French court during the days of the last of the Valois—the most romantic period of royalty probably in all history. The two principal figures are depicted with striking vividness,—the half Catholic, half Protestant sister of Francis I., the grandmother of Henry IV., the author of the famous “Heptameron,” and one of the most admirable historical figures of any epoch; and the diplomatic, ambitious, unscrupulous but extremely human Catherine, universally held responsible for the awful Massacre of Saint Bartholomew. But the subordinate though scarcely less famous women who adorned the Valois Court—Diane de Poitiers, the Duchess d’Étampes, Marguerite of Valois, Marie Stuart, and others—are described with an equally brilliant and illuminating touch.
The volumes on the women of the great Bourbon epoch, the epoch of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., when the Bourbon star was in the zenith, contain a great deal of intimate history as well as setting in relief the interesting personalities of the famous La Vallière and Montespan and that perennial historical enigma, Madame de Maintenon, in the volume devoted to the court of the “Sun King,” and those of Madame de Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, Queen Marie Leczinska, and other celebrities who made Versailles what it was during the long and varied reign of Louis XV. The study of Madame de Maintenon is a real contribution to history, and the pictures of the clever and dazzling beauties who controlled so long the destinies not only of France but measurably of Europe itself from the accession of “le Grand Monarque” to the first threatenings of the Revolution “deluge” are extremely life-like and skilfully executed. The historical chronicle of the time is by no means lost sight of by the author, but in this series even more than in his works heretofore published in English he appears not only as an interesting and impartial historian, but as a brilliant historical portraitist.
FOUR NEW VOLUMES.
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS.
Each with Portraits, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $5.00; half calf, $10.00.
WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT.