Anastasia: The Lost Princess [Hardcover]

James Blair Lovell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1989

[nastasia] reads like a detective novel, [and] presents an often shocking portrait totally at odds with the Anastasia legend of stage and screen. The fullest account of the mystery to date. --Publishers Weekly

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Was Anna Anderson of Charlottesville, Va., who died in 1984, the princess Anastasia, survivor of the Bolshevik massacre of the Russian imperial family, as she claimed to be? In the fullest account of the Anastasia mystery to date, freelance writer Lovell unconvincingly argues that she was indeed the daughter of Nicholas II and Alexandra. In 1976 the author met Anastasia and her husband, John Manahan, eccentric scion of a wealthy Virginia family. Drawing on interviews and on unpublished materials, including some 100 hours of taped dialogue with Anastasia recorded in the 1960s by a Russian investigator, Lovell pieces together this temperamental, reclusive woman's sad, bizarre life, which encompassed stays in German asylums, several breakdowns, depression, paranoia, poverty and endless court cases against her detractors. This chronicle, which reads like a detective novel, presents an often shocking portrait totally at odds with the sugar-coated Anastasia legend of stage and screen. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Readers will encounter a truly bizarre cast of characters here. First there is the "heroine," Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Anastasia, the fourth daughter of Nicholas II, miraculous only survivor of her family's murder. Around her swarm minor European royalty, shady fortune hunters, credulous Americans, and assorted crackpots. The author, who must rank as the most assiduous of the "Anastasia scholars" he frequently invokes, is a complete believer in her story. He pursues every rumor, denounces every doubter, and seems to accept every story his heroine told, including one of a meeting with Hitler, who promised he would restore the Romanovs. Lovell concludes his saga with details of his hunt for a fifth imperial daughter, unknown to history. Those who want to believe his absurd tale will find much here to reinforce their illusions. Most libraries can skip this.
-R.H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing, Inc.; 1st edition (January 15, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895265362
• ISBN-13: 978-0895265364
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,286,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A hatchet job on Anastasia., December 5, 1999

By 

"littlenell8" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anastasia: The Lost Princess (Hardcover)

Once upon a time, circa 1982, DNA was not known of, and Mrs John Manahan, the former Anna Anderson, lived in Charlottesville, Virginia and claimed to be [and probably was] Her Imperial Highness, Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. She had had her claim re-inforced first by the Mangold and Summers book, "File on the Tsar", and then by Peter Kurth's beautifully written, carefully researched, definitive, if you like, study of her life. Then it rained on Mrs Manahan's parade and it rained really hard and the very worst of the rain makers was a man called James Blair Lovell. Read on!

It's hard to know where to begin on this tome! There appears not to have been an editor in sight either. It's a shameful attempt to cash in on Mrs Manahan's tragedy [and tragedy is not too strong a word] as well as attempting to drive a wedge into the group of kind folk who had helped Mrs Manahan in Europe in her attempts [almost successful - too] to gain recognition as Grand Duchess Anastasia.

This book, [as so typical with amateur writers], is so over written that it becomes very tiresome very quickly.

Would it be too disgustingly awful of me to say that the late Mr Lovell appears to have been jealous of Peter Kurth's fine work and definitive study of Mrs Manahan? Anyone whom Peter Kurth has good to say about, i.e., Prince Frederick of Saxe-Altenberg, Ian Lilburn and the good and kind ladies in Unterlengenhardt, have their reputations flayed from them by Lovell. It doesn't make pleasant reading.

Lovell has no ability to relate historic facts to his own day-to-day conception of Mrs Manahan's life. I'm not talking [not yet, anyway] about historic intrigues in Imperial Russia, just facts like mentioning 'airport security' at Frankfurt in July 1968! There was no such thing in July 1968 - there weren't jumbo jets in those days, nor terrorist hi-jackings - Mrs Manahan could have walked onto the plane for Charlottesville carrying a Kalashnikov and twenty-five rounds of ammunition and no-one would have turned a hair.

There was far more 'security' at the "St Petersburg Opera House" which, from it's description, I take to mean the Mariinski Theatre. Lovell tells us a little fable of fiction about an American lady being offered chocolates by the historical Anastasia at a concert there, as they shared the ledge of a box. This is impossible to do at the Mariinski Theatre. You cannot see into the imperial boxes from the ones next to them, never mind have a conversation with one of the occupants. The very idea of Grand Duchess Anastasia being unattended in a theatre box, watched by two thirds of the auditorium, wolfing down chocolates, while at the same time singing a song left me reeling. It is these two incidents in the book that finished Lovell's credibility for me.

Elsewhere in the book he compares Mrs Manahan with a Miss Haversham - did he mean Miss Havisham who appears in Dickens's "Great Expectations"? As I said, not an editor in sight.

How any serious researcher could have possibly taken the fifth daughter of the Tsar seriously beggars belief.

You don't get rubbish like this in Peter Kurth's book. Kurth has the ability not only to write well, but he seems to know what was 'true' testimony and what was 'false' and it is this very sifting of the facts that makes his book so wonderful. Why anyone who claims to have known and like Mrs Manahan, as Lovell does, indeed, claim, could want to attempt to undermine Kurth's fine work is quite beyond me.

There will be many people who wonder what all the fuss is about, in the light of the DNA results, but if Mrs Manahan was an imposter she was, evidentially, at least, a very lucky one.

Poor Mrs Manahan: To have gotten so far - only to have a hatchet job done her by someone she supposedly trusted. This book shed little new light on it's subject but told me a great deal [too much, in fact] about it's author and I drew my own conclusions.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Lesser Biography of Anna Anderson Manahan, August 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Anastasia: The Lost Princess (Paperback)

Lovell's work is clearly inferior to Peter Kurth's on the same subject. While Kurth relied on archival material, Lovell apparently preferred to focus on more bizarre aspects of the Anastasia claimant's story - in this case, the possibility that Nicholas and Alexandra had a 5th daughter. The fact that there is no evidence of this does not stop the late Mr. Lovell.

This book is bound to disappoint both the supporters of Mrs. Manahan and those who accept the DNA evidence that she was not Anastasia. For the former, Lovell brings up matters and associations her supporters would have rather not seen published. For those who do accept the scientific evidence, this is a rather sad tale of a woman who wanted to be someone else.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, August 14, 2006

By 

Royalty Buff - See all my reviews

This review is from: Anastasia: The Lost Princess (Paperback)

I found this book to be totally biased. Even before DNA the case that Anna Anderson was Anastasia was extremely weak. In the Dalldorf Asylum Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden said that she was neither Tatiana nor Anastasia. This is a big clue. She never said she was Anastasia. The idea that she was a member of the Imperial Family was placed in her head by a fellow patient at Dalldorf, Clara Peuthert.

Anderson met her Aunt Princess Irene of Prussia under an assumed name. Neither recognized the other. Also Grand Duchess Olga did not recognize Anderson. Olga Alexandrovna would never be so callous as to reject her niece. Pierre Gilliard also said that she could not be Anastasia. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone once shared a bath with Anastasia and said that the claimant wasn't Anastasia.

Anderson disappeared on 12 August 1922 and reappeared on 15 August 1922. These were the same days on which Franziska Schanzkowska reappeared.

Anastasia knew four languages: Russian, English, French and German. Anna Anderson only knew one: German. She never could speak Russian.

The Author resorts to slander to criticize the claimant's opponents. Lovell claims that a prostitute identified Anna Anderson as Schanzkowska. Where is the proof? Who was the prostitute? No other books refer to a prostitute. Slanderous statements such as this do not belong in print.

The suggestion that Nicholas and Alexandra had a fifth daughter is beneath contempt. This claim destroys Lowell's credibility for good. This claim is an affront to the memory of the Russian Royal family. Not even the most na�ve, desperate or gullible conspiracy theorist could fall for this.

The author seems to record everything uttered by Anna Anderson Manahan during her years of senility no matter how outlandish or farfetched.

Substantial sections of the book bear little relation to reality, for example the King Kong rape story. Whilst watching a showing of the King Kong, Manahan leaves the theatre and then confides in Lovell that the entire family except Alexei were raped in front of each other. The King Kong story is extemely disturbing and despicable, and shows how gullible the author is. It is obvious that Anna Anderson Manahan herself sees how devoted Lovell is towards her and is deliberately making up stories for him.

The author also misidentifies a photo that is really that of Anastasia's sister Marie's ear not Anastasia's ear.

Lovell mocks the claimant's opponents and believes every single word of Anna's. There was nothing regal at all about Anderson's mannerisms or behaviour. There is no balance in this book.