Elizabeth Kerri Mahon

Title:   Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon Author: Kate Williams Hardcover: 368 pages Publisher: Hutchinson (7 Nov 2013) I've been waiting to read this biography ever since it was announced that Kate Williams' next book was going to be a biography of Josephine Bonaparte.  I devoured her  biography of Emma Hamilton, and her dual biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales and Queen Victoria. I think she is one of the best biographers around and not just because she has lovely curly red hair. Even though I saw the book in Waterstones when I was in London in December, I waited until I got back to order it. My suitcase was heavy enough as it was. So I ordered it from Amazon. It was the perfect companion to Heather Webb's novel BECOMING JOSEPHINE. By the time I was finished, I felt that I had a true portrait of the former Empress of the French.  Although Josephine grew up on a plantation, her family were not wealthy. At one point, the family were actually li...

In her lifetime, it was said there were three great powers in Europe: Britain, Russia and Madame de Staël.   She was a political and literary intellectual giant in an age when women weren't expected to be either.   She was also crucial in putting together the coalition that brought down Napoleon, most of the important treaty negotiations between Russia and Sweden against Napoleon were conducted through Madame de Staël.   After Napoleon's fall, her salon in Paris was where the attempts at constitutional monarchy were framed. She was also an accomplished writer of novels ( Delphine, Corrine or Italy ), travel writing (her three volume work ‘On Germany’ was heralded at the time), pamphleteer (she wrote a spirited defense of Marie Antoinette) and literary critic ( On Literature ) who pretty much invented comparative literature. During the reign of terror, Germaine used her status as a Swiss citizen to save the lives of at least a dozen people.   Unlike her contem...