"Dancing to the precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution" by Carolyn Moorehead.
Lucie was a French aristocrat, born to a half-French mother and an Anglo-Irish father. Her world was the Versailles of Marie Antoinette, until the revolution turned that world upside-down. She was married (devotedly, which was unusual in that milieu) to Frederic, another aristocrat and one-time ambassador to Holland. After a great deal of horror, they escaped to America to live on a farm, a life Lucie loved but her husband did not. Lucie wrote her memoirs later in life (she lived to be 83), and was a great letter writer and keeper of letters written to her.
She was an unusual woman for her class and time. A loveless childhood spent with a witch of a grandmother who had no affection for her taught her self-reliance and resilience, and practical skills such as dressmaking and cooking, qualities she would need in her subsequent life. This is more than a biography though; the author manages to make it a biography of the revolution as well, with comments on people, fashions, literature and life-styles. Recommended for fans of female biography and French history.
This is right up my reading alley. Thank you. I am currently reading a biography of Amelia Earheart - and fascinated to discover that she really wasn't a good flyer. Prone to misjudgements. Often.
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