marie antoinette the portrait of an average woman stefan zweig

She would have been like many other French queens that came before her.

Yet, Stefan Zweig’s classic biography of this queen tells us that if it was not for the French Revolution Marie Antoinette would most likely be forgotten in history. My Review: Marie Antoinette is one of history’s most famous queens. An impassioned narrative, Zweig's biography focuses on the human emotions of the participants and victims of the French Revolution, making it both an engrossingly compelling read and a sweeping and informative history.

Stefan Zweig's Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a dramatic account of the guillotine's most famous victim, from the time when as a fourteen-year-old she took Versailles by storm, to her frustrations with her aloof husband, her passionate love affair with the Swedish Count von Fersen, and ultimately to the chaos of the French Revolution and the savagery of the Terror. Synopsis: Life at the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette has long captivated readers, drawn by accounts of the intrigues and pageantry that came to such a sudden and unexpected end. Source: Edelweiss/Publisher in exchange for an honest review. “A stupendous and superb piece of work.Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman “Powerful, magnificent, poignant…” - The New Republic possesses all the qualities of the excellent biography - directness, frankness, full exposition, picturesqueness, characterization, color and delectable readableness.” - The New York Times the biography to end all biographies on Marie Antoinette. Originally published in 1932 and for decades since one of Stefan Zweig’s most popular biographies, this “portrait of an average woman,” betrothed at fourteen, crowned queen at nineteen, and beheaded at thirty-seven, aimed “not to deify, but to humanize.” Supplementing library and archival research with psychological insight, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman is a vivid narrative of France’s most famous queen, her relations with her mother Empress Maria Theresa, her husband Louis XVI, and her lover Swedish Count von Fersen, set against the backdrop of the French and Austrian courts of the ancien régime, the French Revolution and the Terror.

Marie antoinette the portrait of an average woman stefan zweig