A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d' Orléans, 1652-1722 [Hardcover]

Duchesse d'Orleans Elisabeth Charlotte (Author), Liselotte von der Pfalz (Author), Elborg Forster (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1984

On 16 November 1671, Liselotte von der Pfalz, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Elector of Palatine, was married to Philippe d'Orléans, "Monsieur," the only brother of Louis XIV. The marriage was not to be a happy one. Liselotte (known in France as Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orléans, or "Madame") was full of intellectual energy and moral rigor. Homesick for her native Germany, she felt temperamentally ill-suited to life at the French court. The homosexual Monsieur, deeply immersed in the pleasures and intrigues of the court, shared few of his wife's interests. Yet, for the next fifty years, Liselotte remained in France, never far from the center of one of the most glorious courts of Europe. And throughout this period, she wrote letters -- sometimes as many as forty week -- to her friends and relatives in Germany. It is from this extraordinary body of correspondence that A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King has been fashioned. As introduced and translated by Elborg Forster, the letters have become the remarkable personal narrative of Liselotte's transformation from an innocent, yet outspoken, girl into a formidable observer of great events and human folly.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Here at last is one the great texts of the 17th century presented so as to make it available to the modern public." -- Washington Post Book World

"The letters, translated from German by Elborg Forster, are accompanied by an excellent introduction and a `Cast of Characters' as informative as any scholar could want. For the general reader they are probably the most lively and entertaining when they deal with the personalities of Louis XIV and his family." -- Louis Auchincloss, New York Times Book Review

"A most illuminating, fascinating, and interesting volume." -- Alfred J. Bingham, Historian

Book Description

The extraordinary correspondence of the sister-in-law of Louis XIV -- the personal narrative of Liselotte's transformation from an innocent, yet outspoken, girl into a formidable observer of great events and human folly.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 287 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; First Edition Thus edition (October 1, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801831598
• ISBN-13: 978-0801831591
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 7.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,692,814 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gekronte Schlaven, February 22, 2010

By 

William Haskett "I read" (DC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d' Orléans, 1652-1722 (Paperback)

If you share the current love affair with Jane Austen, and still remember Emily Dickinson, or are intrigued by the attitudes and poses of the present 'royals' including Diana, you should try this woman for comparison. She is German in France, a Westphalian woman, wife of a distinctive modality to the brother of Louis xiv(/Monsieur'...but actually and defiantly herself: inward looking and observant ('my daughter's looks are quite haeslich=ugly, hateful etc...) everything you ever wanted to know about being a ruling-class woman, who is persecuted by Louis' mistress (de Maintenon, the 'old hag,' the trollop' etc.) and reports on the inner life of the most powerful and corrupt court of the period...without being absorbed or entirely downcast by its habits, its immmorality, or its imaginary piety or carried away from its bisexuality in relationship...mistresses who become duchesses, men who love boys and ignore their wives, kings who are terrified by the prospect of their own deaths and cannot allow the strength of other's actual philosophic or theological thought to penetrate his own ignorance or his dependence on the apparent orthodoxy of his mistress' hostilities. A woman's Book.

Witty, humorous, pithy and scatological, all at once in a lifetime of letter-writing, (four each day and 7 0r 8 each Sunday of which only a relative few of her 60,000 or so letters have survived. Note: Gekronte Schlaven='Crowned Slaves.'

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting insight., August 7, 2010

By 

Beatriz S. Wronski (Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d' Orléans, 1652-1722 (Paperback)

Interesting insight into into the Louis "le roi soleil" Court. But at times it drags into one long lamentation.