Versailles: A Biography of a Palace [Hardcover]

Tony Spawforth (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0312357850 | ISBN-13: 978-0312357856 | Publication Date: October 14, 2008 | Edition: 1st

The behind-the-scenes story of the world’s most famous palace, painting a picture of the way its residents truly lived and examining the palace’s legacy, from French history through today

The story of Versailles is one of historical drama, under the last three kings of France’s old regime, mixed with the high camp and glamour of the European courts, all in an iconic home for the French arts. The palace itself has been radically altered since 1789, and the court was long ago swept away. Versailles sets out to rediscover what is now a vanished world: a great center of power, seat of royal government, and, for thousands, a home both grand and squalid, bound by social codes almost incomprehensible to us today.

Using eyewitness testimony as well as the latest historical research, Spawforth offers the first full account of Versailles in English in over thirty years. Blowing away the myths of Versailles, he analyses afresh the politics behind the Sun King’s construction of the palace and shows how Versailles worked as the seat of a royal court. He probes the conventional picture of a “perpetual house party” of courtiers and gives full weight to the darker side: not just the mounting discomfort of the aging buildings but also the intrigue and status anxiety of its aristocrats. The book brings out clearly the fateful consequences for the French monarchy of its relocation to Versailles and also examines the changing place of Versailles in France’s national identity since 1789.

 Many books have told the stories of the royals and artists living in Versailles, but this is the first to turn its focus on the palace itself---from architecture and politics to scandal and restoration.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British historian Spawforth animates the palace that was home to the most charismatic monarchy in Europe for a century, until the French Revolution. The glamour and pageantry of the palace hid a multitude of sins. The clothes-conscious Louis XIV, for instance, created a new office, grand master of the wardrobe, and appointed a duke whom the memoirist Saint-Simon likened to a slave. A handsome aristocratic page to Marie-Antoinette, Alexandre de Tilly, recounted his sexual intrigues at age 16 with a 36-year-old widowed countess, conducted in various palace locations. At Versailles the royals ate publicly, a display that was supposed to humanize them as spectators raced around to watch each member of the royal family dine; the crowd horrified a Russian princess in 1768. Chamber pots on the palace's the upper stories were frequently emptied into the interior courts below; Marie-Antoinette was hit—intentionally, she believed—as she passed under the windows of Madame du Barry, her father-in-law the king's mistress. This well-researched and highly engrossing account conjures a bygone era with all its opulence, deference and perilous insularity. 8 pages of color photos. (Oct.)
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From School Library Journal

Starred Review. This fascinating, immensely readable book will be welcomed by both general readers and those interested in French culture. Using an impressive array of sources, Spawforth (ancient history, Newcastle Univ.; The Complete Greek Temples) re-creates the history of Versailles and its inhabitants, focusing not merely on architectural details but on the many human stories hidden within its lengthy past. Meticulously tracing the growth and changing usages of the palace from the days of Louis XIII to the ill-fated departure of Louis XVI in the upheaval of the Revolution, he offers vivid insights into a vanished world of royal and aristocratic splendor as he describes the clothing, rituals, habits, ceremonies, and entertainments of a social set obsessed with the "fetishes of rank." No detail appears to have escaped his purview as he looks at the court's dress codes, standards of service, etiquette rituals, and sanitary facilities. Even more important are the glimpses he provides into the lives of those servants and townspeople who made life at Versailles possible, individuals such as the "water waiter" who oversaw a kind of underground economy by redistributing leftovers from royal tables. This book thoughtfully analyzes how Versailles has been both a living community and a symbol of many things—royal magnificence, despotism, extravagance, isolation, and, finally, national pride. Most intriguing is the little-known story of what became of Versailles after the Revolution and the key role played by conservators like Pierre de Nolhac in preserving and reconstructing its history. Highly recommended for large public libraries.—Marie Marmo Mullaney, Caldwell Coll., N.J.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (October 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312357850
• ISBN-13: 978-0312357856
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #231,709 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Biography, November 18, 2008

By 

Bonnie Neely - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (Hardcover)

Versailles: A Biography of a Palace by Tony Spawforth is an architectural history quite different from most of the dull, dry ones. This book is filled with true stories of incidents within Versailles told by its inhabitants, from servants to kings and queens. The history of place is derived not only from facts and descriptions but also from writings of people who actually lived there or helped work on the palace and gardens. This is really interesting, sort of like eves-dropping on a wicked plot or an unlawful tryst, or the collapse of a kingdom, for which the palace itself plays a huge part as the culprit. The book is fun to read, captivating, and will fill your mind with images of an unbelievably decadent and lavish lifestyle, long-gone forever. You'll find this an interesting read.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Abridged Memoirs, January 30, 2009

By 

Anthony J. Esposito - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (Hardcover)

The expansive title and good press that accompanied this book promised an interesting history of the palace of Versailles. Unfortunately it reads more along the lines of an abridged version of the Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. While there are numerous anecdotes of the various people that lived at Versailles, they can be read elsewhere in greater detail with more relevance to their significance to society and history. There is no order to what is written, and while the author jumps back and forth across decades, the focus is primarily that of the reign of Louis XIV. There is little or no mention of Marly or the evolution of the Trianons under Louis XIV, the petits appartments of Louis XV, the Petit Trianon, Hamlet, and gardens of Marie Antoinette much less the inventiveness that accompanied their creation. There is little history post revolution that could include fascinating stories from Napoleon through the end of WWI. The history that would complement and illustrate the lives of the people that made Versailles the center of European culture for decades is lacking. Surely there are better books that capture these details and tell a more complete story of Versailles. Unfortunately this is not one of them as it never appears to aspire to be more than what the Duc de Saint-Simon saw and wrote about in his lifetime.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars I've Been Waiting For This Book..., January 5, 2009

By 

Michael Bishop (Atlanta, GA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (Hardcover)

This is not a "coffee table" picturebook of Versailles. There are plenty of those to be had. What's been missing from the literature on this subject has been a book that explains the workings of the palace, its social and political context and the routines and rhythms of day-to-day life in what was, essentially, an enormous gilded cage for the French nobility. This book begins to fill that niche. My only complaint would be that the author could have included a few more architectural drawings to illustrate the evolution of the palace and the changing arrangement of rooms over the reigns of the three kings of France who lived in Versailles. These developments are discussed in interesting detail, but the effect is diminished without a visual to assist the reader. Overall, a very good and interesting read.