He was also a radical political thinker and eventual exile from France; a gifted painter and architect; a visionary who conversed with Virgil, Shakespeare, and Jesus Christ; in short, a tantalizing personality who dominated and maddened his contemporaries.

    Charriere presents six letters penned by a Mistriss Henley, who has chosen a decent and affectionate man as her life's companion only to discover that she cannot bear sharing his life. An immediate success on its publication in 1784, Mistriss Henley was greeted with acclaim and controversy: one reader called the book "literarily excellent" but "morally dangerous in various ways." Remarkable for its empathy for both spouses, Mistriss Henley is not only a moving work of fiction but also one of the most modern novels of its day.

    Polanski would go on to become one of the best and most infamous directors in Hollywood’s history, with a list of achievements that includes Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, Macbeth, Chinatown, Tess, Frantic, and more recently, the Golden Globe- and Oscar-winning The Pianist.Yet the most dramatic story has unfolded within his own personal life: in August 1969, his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and seven of their friends were butchered by the Manson family. Polanski was in London at the time. Eight years later he was arrested by L.A. police on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in Jack Nicholson’s home. Polanski fled the country and has since lived in exile in Paris.The director is currently filming Oliver Twist and promises to follow it with his version of the Tate killings. Both projects, dealing with child exploitation and murder, can only fuel the controversy that surrounds him. This biography is timed to coincide with the release of the movies, and will be the first opportunity to read about this talented yet wildly excessive personality in such depth for over fourteen years.

    Written in epistolary format, the story follows Julia from her idyllic country life to her marriage to a rich aristocrat. She soon discovers her husband is nothing other than a rake, spending all his and her money on gambling and mistresses. Without the protection of a husband, soon others come on the scene, intent on taking advantage of young and naive Julia. An anonymous guardian, in the guise of The Sylph, writes to her, giving her guidance through her troubles...but will it be enough?

    A mixed group of twenty-six men, some of the Marshals came from aristocratic backgrounds, some had originally pursued tradesmen careers as drapers and bakers, and others rose from total poverty to hold the highest positions in the empire below the emperor himself. Delderfield's exciting chronicle of these men and their battles tells of their origins, their elevation under the rule of Napoleon, the kingships achieved by some and the betrayals of others, and the Marshals' changing relationship with their leader as the fortunes of the empire rose and fell.

    He brings his insider's knowledge to this moving account of the most famous French soldier's last years in seclusion on a tropical island. After his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was exiled and imprisoned by the British on the island of St. Helena. He became increasingly withdrawn, surviving on a diet of memories that he recounted to the few people around him. But the book -- part history, part travelogue -- portrays the leader as a prisoner also of his mind, poisoned by nostalgia for his triumphs and grief over his defeats. "A haunting, unforgettable book....Kauffmann captures the desolate atmosphere of Napoleon's last home with evocative precision." -- Boston Globe

    Marie Antoinette was a mirror of her time. Never has a queen been so passionately admired and adulated, then hunted, vilified, and defamed. Spanning her tragically brief yet passionate life—from the young queen playing a shepherdess on stage, unaware of the turmoil in the capital, to France’s guillotined “martyr queen"—the author demystifies the legend, unveiling the woman behind the queen, and the wife and mother behind the sovereign.  Readers will experience the palatial luxury of the queen’s Versailles by tracing Marie Antoinette’s footsteps through the royal residence, as well as discovering her voice through rare letters and encountering little-known works in her private art collection.

    Beauvoir recounts her difficult long-distance romance with novelist Nelson Algren and her involvement with Claude Lanzmann (the future director of Shoah). She also vividly describes her travels with Sartre to Brazil and Cuba, reveals her private sense of despair in reaction to French atrocities in Algeria, and confronts her own deepening depression. Simone de Beauvoir's outstanding achievement is to have left us an admirable record of her unceasing battle to become an independent woman and writer.Introduction by Toril Moi

    Now, the paperback edition of her delightful book will take even more Americans to the richly historic part of the city that has always attracted us, from Ben Franklin in the 18th-century to raffish novelist Henry Miller in the 20th.Modern St.-Germain is lively and prosperous, and fifty years ago its heady mix of jazz and existentialism defined urbane cool, but Johnson takes a longer view. "Beside the shades of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edith Piaf," she writes, "there is another crowd of resident ghosts... misty figures in plumed hats whose fortunes and passions were enacted among these beautiful, imposing buildings." From her kitchen window, she looks out on a chapel begun by Reine Margot, wife of Henri IV; nearby streets are haunted by the shades of two sinister cardinals, Mazarin and Richelieu, as well as four famed queens and at least five kings. Delacroix, Corot, Ingres, David, and Manet all lived in St.-Germain; Oscar Wilde died there; and everybody who was anybody visited sooner or later.With her delicious imagination and wry, opinionated voice, Diane Johnson makes a companionable and fascinating guide to a classic neighborhood as cosmopolitan as it is quintessentially French.

    When she entered in film industry as a child artist in 1942, who could ever thought on seeing her that one day she would become one of the most beautiful and versatile actresses of Hindi cinema. Lavishly illustrated with photos of Madhubala, this special book covers in detail the major events in her life, her rise in the film industry from bit player to celebrity and her marriage to Kishore Kumar. Her life, especially her helplessness at being caught between the two persons she loved most in life -- Dilip Kumar and her father Ataullah Khan, is vividly portrayed. ******************************************** DISCOVERY BOOK: If you are fond of reading and wish to acquire genuine information… then 'Discovery Book' is for you. Providing such accurate and detailed information, that too at such a lower price is indeed a challenging task for our team. It is really tough to find all the relevant information on the internet or in a library in so short time… that too in your own language. Our entire team is committed towards our readers, where our main objective is not to earn huge profits but to provide the best information to the readers. Reliable information, deep analysis, your own language and significantly lower price… you will find it all in 'Discovery Book'. All you just need to enhance your reading interest. Through this series, we will explore the life of various successful people, will get to know the main causes and treatments of fatal diseases and will also explore the past of world-renowned monuments and famous cities. 'Discovery Book' is available at all leading bookstores, news-stands and online mega stores. So let's embark on this fascinating journey of information. Read and encourage others to read.

    This volume of interviews—hailed on its French publication as Duras’s “secret confession”—offers readers a rich vein of new insight into her work, opinions, life, and relationships. The interviews that make up the book were conducted in 1987, when Italian journalist Leopoldina Pallotta della Torre met the seventy-three-year-old Duras at her Paris flat and convinced her to sit for a series of conversations. The resulting book was published in Italian in 1989, but it somehow failed to attract a French publisher, and it was quickly forgotten. Nearly a quarter of a century later, however, the book was rediscovered and translated into French, and, it has now become a sensation. In its revealing pages, Duras speaks with extraordinary freedom about her life as a writer, her relationship to cinema, her friendship with Mitterand , her love of Chekhov and football, and, perhaps most significantly, her childhood in pre-war Vietnam, the experiences that propelled her most famous novel, The Lover. A true literary event, finally available in English, The Suspended Passion is a remarkable document of an extraordinary literary life.

    Rousseau was a major Swiss philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.This ebook is DRM free and includes an active table of contents.

    A sympathetic tribute from one great composer for the piano to another

    Rather, Chantal Thomas presents the history of the verbal and visual representations of Marie-Antoinette, the history of her mythification. Almost as soon as Marie-Antoinette, archduchess of Austria, was brought to France in 1771 as the bride of Louis XVI, she was smothered in images.In a monarchy increasingly under assault, the charm and horror of her feminine body and her destructive political power as a foreign intruder turned Marie-Antoinette into an alien other -- the bestial "arch-tigress of Austria." Working as a historian and writing like a novelist, Thomas reveals how Marie-Antoinette came to symbolize the marginalization and negation of women in French society before the French Revolution.In a series of pamphlets written between the 1770s and her death in 1793, Marie-Antoinette was portrayed as a frivolous and extravagant spendthrift and lesbian, an incestuous and bloodthirsty libertine, a poisoner and infant murderess. "Through her wickedness," writes Thomas, "she caused the Revolution."In her analyses of these anonymous pamphlets, seven of which are included here in translation for the first time, Thomas reconstructs how the pamphleteers' mounting hallucinatory and libelous discourse culminated in the inevitable and physical destruction of what had become the counterrevolutionary symbol par excellence. The Wicked Queen exposes the complex and complicated history and power of an image, the elaborate process by which the myth of Marie-Antoinette emerged as a crucial element in the successful staging of the French Revolution.

    Based on the true story of Elizabeth Armistead, one of the most notorious and successful courtesans of 18th century England.From the harsh streets of London, Lizzie Cane rose to become the celebrated mistress of earls, dukes, and even a prince! Then at the height of her career, she risked everything she had struggled to gain by breaking the courtesan's cardinal rule...Never fall in love.