Eliza de Feuillide is best known as the spirited first cousin of Jane Austen whose colourful life and travels are recounted through her extensive correspondence with Jane, the Austen family, and other friends and relatives. Born in Calcutta in 1761, she spent an impecunious childhood in England and then France, where she married an aristocratic French Officer and lived through the Revolution, surviving her husband, who was guillotined in 1794. Many of Eliza's letters vividly illuminate the lives of Jane Austen and her family, as well as revealing the wider world against which Austen's novels are set. The letters were never intended for publication and are all the more revealing for being long before Jane became a well-known authoress.
This new biography collects all the surviving letters, providing many valuable new insights into the background to Jane Austen's novels as well as being a highly entertaining social and historical record in its own right.
This review is from: Jane Austen's 'Outlandish Cousin': The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide (Hardcover)
Jane Austen's 'Outlandish Cousin': The Life and Letters of Eliza de Feuillide by Austen biographer Deirdre Le Faye is the informative and engaging story of Eliza de Feuillide, a grand woman who is best known to history as the strong-willed first cousin of Jane Austin. Eliza's international life, her time in the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, her marriage to a French aristocrat, her sudden widowhood when the guillotine claimed her husband in 1794, and much, much more are covered in depth in this fascinating, aptly researched, and exceptionally well-written life story which is enhanced with excerpts drawn from Eliza's elegantly written correspondence. Jane Austen's 'Outlandish Cousin' is especially recommended reading for students and scholars of Jane Austen and 18th Century French history.
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