Memoirs

Memoirs (1999) by Madame de la Tour du Pin (The Harvill Press)

If you like your history served with gossip, exile, revolutions, and a touch of aristocratic eye-rolling, then Madame de la Tour du Pin’s Memoirs are your ticket. First published in English in 1999 by The Harvill Press, this is the vivid, no-nonsense account of an 18th-century French noblewoman who somehow managed to survive the Revolution, run a farm in upstate New York, and still have time to note who wore what in Parisian salons.

Madame was everywhere: Versailles, the guillotine years, Napoleonic Europe – and she tells it with a sharp pen and a survivor’s sense of humour. The book reads like a cross between a social diary and a dispatch from the front lines of history.

Our copy? It’s Harvill’s sturdy trade paperback – perfectly readable, though a little weary round the edges, much like the Ancien Régime by the time Madame was done with it. Ideal for lovers of history, memoir, and the fine art of name-dropping your way through social collapse.

Condition as new.

Keep browsing: See more Biography books Other books by Madame de la Tour du Pin