Love and Louis XIV - by Antonia Fraser (Paperback)

About the Book

Fraser, acclaimed historian and author of "Marie Antoinette," casts new light on the splendor and the scandals of the reign of Louis XIV in this dramatic, illuminating look at the women in his life.

Book Synopsis

Louis XIV, the highly-feted "Sun King", was renowned for his political and cultural influence and for raising France to a new level of prominence in seventeenth-century Europe. And yet, as Antonia Fraser keenly describes, he was equally legendary in the domestic sphere. Indeed, a panoply of women--his mother, Anne; mistresses such as Louise de la Vallière, Athénaïs de Montespan, and the puritanical Madame de Maintenon; and an array of courtesans--moved in and out of the court. The highly visible presence of these women raises many questions about their position in both Louis XIV's life and in France at large. With careful research and vivid, engaging prose, Fraser makes the multifaceted life of one of the most famous European monarchs accessible and vibrantly current.

Review Quotes

"Excellent...a pleasure to read throughout." --The Wall Street Journal"Highly readable....with vivid wit, Fraser demonstrates that within the edifice of the monarchy there were deep crannies of ordinary affection." --The New Yorker"Entertaining and instructive....we must still be grateful to Antonia Fraser for devising so excellent a companion with which to lie back and think of France." --The New York Times"Engaging...the sumptuously illustrated Love and Louis XIV focuses on the diverse array of women who 'lit up the court of the Sun King.'" --The Washington Post

About the Author

Antonia Fraser is the author of many internationally bestselling historical works, including Love and Louis XIV, Marie Antoinette, which was made into a film by Sofia Coppola, The Wives of Henry VIII, Mary Queen of Scots, Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot, and Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832. She is also the author of Must You Go? My Life with Harold Pinter. She has received the Wolfson Prize for History, the 2000 Norton Medlicott Medal of Britain's Historical Association, and the Franco-British Society's Enid McLeod Literary Prize. She was made a Dame of the British Empire for services to Literature in 2011.