Madame de Pompadour (New York Review Books Classics) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Amanda Foreman (Introduction) "AFTER THE DEATH of the great King, beautiful Versailles, fatal for France, lay empty seven years while fresh air blew through its golden rooms, blowing..." (more)
Key Phrases: court usage, secret staircase, Madame de Pompadour, Madame du Hausset, Madame Poisson (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

When Madame de Pompadour became the mistress of Louis XV, no one expected her to retain his affections for long. A member of the bourgeoisie rather than an aristocrat, she was physically too cold for the carnal Bourbon king, and had so many enemies that she could not travel publicly without risking a pelting of mud and stones. History has loved her little better.Nancy Mitford's delightfully candid biography re-creates the spirit of eighteenth-century Versailles with its love of pleasure and treachery. We learn that the Queen was a "bore," the Dauphin a "prig," and see France increasingly overcome with class conflict. With a fiction writer's felicity, Mitford restores the royal mistress and celebrates her as a survivor, unsurpassed in "the art of living," who reigned as the most powerful woman in France for nearly twenty years.

About the Author

NANCY MITFORD (1904–1973) was born into the British aristocracy and, by her own account, brought up without an education, except in riding and French. She managed a London bookshop during the Second World War, then moved to Paris, where she began to write her celebrated and successful novels, among them The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, about the foibles of the English upper class. Nancy Mitford was also the author of four biographies: Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire in Love, The Sun King, and Frederick the Great.

Product Details

• Paperback: 296 pages
• Publisher: NYRB Classics; Reprint edition (March 31, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 094032265X
• ISBN-13: 978-0940322653
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #280,929 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Courtsean, August 5, 2001

By	P A Brown (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Nancy Mitford has a remarkable ability to blend historical fact with equally factual gossip and cunning insight. The result is a biography of great charm that offers much for both serious students of history and those who also enjoy the backstairs take on famous people -- beauty marks, warts and all. "Madame de Pompadour" is especially rich is limning the life of this great horizontal, with all its struggles, sorrows and triumphs (she was lovely, with elegant taste, a delightful companion, but sadly frigid). Pompadour, beautiful, charming, erudite and influential was the favorite of Louis XV for many years, and was loved and hated with equal intensity by his court. The books is lavishly illustrated with portraits of Pompadour, the King, courtiers, Versailles and its gardens and lush interiors, art and bijou -- all the luxury in over which she reigned and inspired. Ms. Mitford's prose in incomparable in its easy elegance and fluid felicity -- a great read by any standards. But do not mistake her light hand with light history. This is a biography of great richness and learned insight, giving us a portrait of a powerful woman during a fascinating chapter in French history.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not As Easy As It Looks, December 12, 2001

By	sweetmolly (RICHMOND, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

To be a mistress to an 18th Century monarch is no sinecure. First and foremost, the king must be kept enchanted and amused at all times. Friends and enemies must be dealt with. Relatives must be cared for. Appearance must be perfect. Taste must be exquisite.

Little Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson was not exactly born for the role; she was a bourgeoisie, rather than the aristocrat, which automatically made her a poor candidate for the King's intimate favors. She was not a sensual woman, and the Bourbon kings were known as lusty. She overcame all by her total devotion to the king, her kindness, savoir-faire, and brilliant taste in décor, art, and architecture. Luckily for the Marquise, Louis XV was a man of habit. Once he became fond of Madame, his eye might stray, but he saw no reason whatsoever to change his arrangements.

Madame is Nancy Mitford's kind of girl. Her biography is affectionate and admiring while not being a puff piece. Her history is good and her style is light hearted and charming. Ms. Mitford gives us a vivid picture of Versailles at its apex, yet does not gloss over the hardships and realities of the day. Court society was sterile in that none of its members had anything to do but be amused by gossip and frivolity. Banishment from Court was a small death because their lives were engineered only by pleasure, and pleasure was only to be had at Court.

This is a fine biography with an excellent contemporary view of the times. Highly recommended.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Admiring and Admirable, November 29, 2003

By	C. Gilbert "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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I have read that Mitford began this book with amusement and a certain degree of condescension, but finished it with a deep admiration for the woman who had been the mistress of a king. One of the things that I liked so much about this book is that you always see the affection and admiration, and it's so clear that it would be easy not to see that.

In the histories that I have read to date that touch Versailles, many of the actual details of the period have been elided. It has come to be such shorthand for artificial elegance and extravagence that hardly any writers bother to explain what it was really about. The manners, the customs, the position of the nobility in France-- all these things were much clearer to me after reading Mitford's sparkling account than they were from any of the other history that I have read. For all that she chooses a seemingly frivolous main subject, Mitford never fails to point out how her subject applied or related to the key political questions of the time and the contrast is both entertaining and smart.

Recommended for almost all kinds of readers-- I think this would be excellent if one would just like some relaxing entertainment and from my point of view it also helped give me a more real look at the historical period in France.