Marie Antoinette: Biographie [Gebundene Ausgabe]

Marie Antoinette, Antonia Fraser's first book in five years, heralds the welcome return of her wonderfully lucid, engaging style as she disentangles myth from fact regarding the life of the still controversial, and misunderstood, wife of Louis XVI of France. It is also perhaps her most assured work to date. The daughter of Empress Maria Teresa of Austria, the 14-year-old Marie Antoinette, or l'Autrichienne, was sent to France to marry the Dauphin in 1770 in an act of political union between the two countries. Despite her husband's preference for the hunting field over the bedroom, and a somewhat inexpressive personality--his final terse diary entry was to be, appropriately, "Rien"--a decade of French courtly exuberance entailed. Her disappointment in marriage gave way to an enjoyment of her position, especially on turning 30, yet an increasing number of libelles and scandalous rumours about the new Queen and her sexual proclivities grew from Versailles' whispers to the shouts of what was to be the revolution of 1789. This was followed by her own awful demise and beheading four wretched years later, after the appalling torture of her own young son falsely testifying that he had been sexually abused by her.

Those are the skeletal facts of her life, but Fraser fleshes out the story with her customary composed authority. Her stated ambition is twofold. The book's subtitle, "The Journey", refers to Marie Antoinette's political significance in a union over which she had no control, but also her own personal story, from the ill-educated, overwhelmed teenage bride to the despised monarch who bore the brunt of all the ills of the ancien régime. Fraser, arch debunker, necessarily removes the apocryphal--Mozart the child prodigy saying that he would marry her, the infamous "let them eat cake" comment that preceded her by several hundred years, dressing as a milkmaid at her model village in the grounds of Versailles--to reveal a woman whose misfortunes, she concludes, outweighed her failures. Like the Jemima Shore detective novels she also pens, Fraser displays an unerring ability to ask the right questions. Most of all, though, she writes with an understated, unadorned clarity that imparts her learning with an ease to be both envied and savoured. In 1789, Marie Antoinette famously said to a deputation from the Commune of Paris, "I've seen everything, known everything, and forgotten everything". There could be no wiser, compassionate and judicious reclaimer of her besmirched reputation than Antonia Fraser.--David Vincent -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

In the past, Antonia Fraser's bestselling histories and biographies have focused on people and events in her native England, from Mary Queen of Scots to Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot. Now she crosses the Channel to limn the life of France's unhappiest queen, bringing along her gift for fluent storytelling, vivid characterization, and evocative historical background. Marie Antoinette (1755-93) emerges in Fraser's sympathetic portrait as a goodhearted girl woefully undereducated and poorly prepared for the dynastic political intrigues into which she was thrust at age 14, when her mother, Empress Maria Theresa, married her off to the future Louis XVI to further Austria's interests in France. Far from being the licentious monster later depicted by the radicals who sent her to the guillotine at the height of the French Revolution, young Marie Antoinette was quite prudish, as well as thoroughly humiliated by her husband's widely known failure to have complete intercourse with her for seven long years (the gory details were reported to any number of concerned royal parties, including her mother and brother). She compensated by spending lavishly on clothes and palaces, but Fraser points out that this hardly made her unique among 18th-century royalty, and in any case the causes of the Revolution went far beyond one woman's frivolities. The moving final chapters show Marie Antoinette gaining in dignity and courage as the Revolution stripped her of everything, subjected her to horrific brutalities (a mob paraded the head of her closest female friend on a pike below her window), and eventually took her life. Fraser makes no attempt to hide the queen's shortcomings, in particular her poor political skills, but focuses on her personal warmth and noble bearing during her final ordeal. It's another fine piece of popular historical biography to add to Fraser's already impressive bibliography. --Wendy Smith -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Did Marie Antoinette, the notorious and ill-fated queen of France, actually respond to the peasants' clamor for bread with, "Let them eat cake"? Such myths and fallacies associated with the consort of the guillotined Louis XVI are cleared up in this vivid, well-rounded biography by the popular British author of, among other well-received works, Mary Queen of Scots (1969) and Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration (1979). Marie Antoinette was dispatched to the French court as a teenage bride by her mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, to cement an alliance between the two "superpowers." Marie's intended role was to function as a spy-agent for the Austrian imperial court. She had been raised with a certain informality, a sensibility she brought with her to the opulent Palace of Versailles, but Fraser is quick to admit to Marie's extravagance once she became queen. Even though Marie's marriage to Louis XVI proved problematic, the king never took a mistress; however, Marie got saddled with a reputation for taking lovers of both sexes. Although Marie had no real taste for politics, the revolution proved fatal for her, but Fraser concludes, "her weaknesses, although manifest, were of trivial worth in the balance of her misfortune." Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Fraser (Mary Queen of Scots) has written an exciting biography of a young Austrian woman named Marie Antoinette, the future bride of a future king of France, during a period of increasing political unrest. This volume moves quickly, but not without the most interesting of historical detail, through the courts of Austria and France. Marie Antoinette was the bride at 14 to Louis Auguste, her senior by just over a year; they both lacked the maturity for marriage, let alone the political leadership to command a European power. Fraser leads us through the daily lives of the two young people constantly before the public eye; from the planned marriage we move into an era of political and social revolution, knowing what the final violent outcome will be yet hoping for a different end. A well-researched biography that may cause one to rethink the role in which history has cast Marie Antoinette, this complements but doesn't replace Evelyne Lever's slightly less sympathetic Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France (LJ 6/1/00). Highly recommended for academic and public libraries. Bruce H. Webb, Clarion Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"Drama, Betrug, Religion und Sex. Es ist alles da." (Guardian )

"Eine wunderbare Biographie, einfühlsam ohne sentimental zu sein, mit einem feinen Gespür für die Beschaffenheit dieser vergangenen Epoche." (Literary Review )

"Lady Antonias unnachahmliche britische Mischung aus Analyse und Anmut, Präzision und Psychodrama, Geschichte und Geschichten fasziniert." (Der Spiegel )

Das Schicksal der legendären letzten Königin von Frankreich

Die Grande Dame der englischen Biographen-Zunft, Lady Antonia Fraser, schildert das Leben der letzten Monarchin von Frankreich: Vom jungen Mädchen, das sich fern der österreichischen Heimat am Versailler Hof zurechtfinden muss, bis zur angefeindeten Königin, die schließlich vor den Augen eines aufgehetzten Volkes guillotiniert wird.
Einfühlsam, aber ohne jede Sentimentalität beschreibt Fraser das Schicksal dieser Frau und entwirft gleichzeitig das lebendige und anschauliche Portrait eines Landes an einem historischen Wendepunkt.
Sofia Coppolas neuester Kinofilm „Marie Antoinette“ basiert auf Antonia Frasers Buch. Der Film startet Anfang November 2006 in den deutschen Kinos.

Als die Kaiserin von Österreich, die mächtige Maria Theresia, sich im April des Jahres 1770 von ihrer Tochter Antoine verabschiedete, gab sie ihr folgende Worte mit auf den Weg: "Lebewohl, mein liebstes Kind, eine große Entfernung wird uns trennen ... Tue den Franzosen so viel Gutes, daß sie sagen können, ich hätte ihnen einen Engel gesandt." Danach brach sie in Tränen aus.
Antoine, die als Marie Antoinette in die Geschichte einging, gibt bis heute Anlass zu erhitzten Diskussionen. Während die einen in ihr die „reine méchante“, die bösartige Königin, sehen, die mit ihrem extravaganten Lebensstil die französische Monarchie geradezu in den Abgrund stürzte, sehen andere in ihr ein Opfer frauenfeindlicher Agitation und Geschichtsschreibung.
Antonia Fraser zeichnet das Leben dieser außergewöhnlichen Frau nach. Sie schildert die Kindheit Marie Antoinettes am Habsburgischen Hof, die Rolle des jungen Mädchens als Figur auf dem politischen Schachbrett ihrer Mutter, die problematische Ehe mit dem französischen Dauphin, dem die Jagd wichtiger war, als mit seiner jungen Ehefrau einen Thronfolger zu zeugen. Anschaulich beschreibt Fraser das ausschweifende Leben der Königin am Hof von Versailles, ihren Einfluss als Mäzenin auf die Kunst ihrer Zeit, die Anschuldigungen und Angriffe gegen die „Österreicherin“ und schließlich ihre Hinrichtung während der Französischen Revolution mitten in Paris im Jahre 1793.

"Drama, Betrug, Religion und Sex. Es ist alles da."
Guardian

"Eine wunderbare Biographie, einfühlsam ohne sentimental zu sein, mit einem feinen Gespür für die Beschaffenheit dieser vergangenen Epoche."
Literary Review

"Lady Antonias unnachahmliche britische Mischung aus Analyse und Anmut, Präzision und Psychodrama, Geschichte und Geschichten fasziniert."
Der Spiegel

Lady Antonia Fraser ist die Grande Dame der englischen Biographen-Zunft. Die Historikerin und Bestseller-Autorin steht für einfühlsam geschriebene und gut recherchierte historische Biographien. Sie wurde u. a. mit dem renommierten "Wolfson-History-Preis" ausgezeichnet. Auf Deutsch erschienen von ihr "Die sechs Frauen Heinrichs VIII." und "Maria Stuart". Antonia Fraser ist mit dem britischen Theaterautor und Literaturnobelpreisträger Harold Pinter verheiratet. Sie lebt in London.