Marie Antoinette [Unknown Binding]

Stefan Zweig (Author)

Book Description

Stefan Zweig based his biography of Marie Antoinette, who became the Queen of France at the age of fifteen, on the correspondence between her and her mother, and her great love the Count Axel von Fersen. Zweig analyzes the chemistry of a woman's soul from her intimate pleasures to her public suffering as a Queen under the weight of misfortune and history. Zweig describes Marie Antoinette in the King's bedroom, in the enchanted and extravagant world of the Trianon, and with her children. And in his account of 'The Revolution', he describes her resolve during the failed escape to varennes, her imprisonment in the Conciergerie and her final tragic destiny under the guillotine. Zweig's account has been the definitive biography of Marie Antoinette since its publication, inspiring Antonia Fraser and the recent film adaptation.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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About the Author

STEFAN ZWEIG was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Unknown Binding
• ASIN: B00005WDFO
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,000,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Intimate Portrait, June 13, 2006

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MSJ "Midnight Reader" (Down South) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marie Antoinette. (Paperback)

Mr. Zweig provides a sensitive, illuminating portrait of Marie Antoinette that serves as an in-depth character study of the Queen while the ominous events of the French Revolution overtake her and her family. You will find yourself more in sympathy with Marie Antoinette than at odds with her. Zweig presents her as a woman more on a collision course with her station in life than as a despotic, unfeeling Queen. Along the way, he addresses some of the more mythical qualities of the ill-fated royal house and dispenses with the more outrageous claims about Marie Antoinette in particular. He never sugar-coats her failings, but rather shows how in any other woman these same failings would not have had the catastrophic consequences they had for Marie and her family. While reading Zweig's book, you feel you not only come to know Marie Antoinette, but you actually care that her life ended the way it did.