Catherine the Great - Hardcover

Virginia, Rounding

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091799929 ISBN 13: 9780091799922

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2006

Synopsis

Many legends have grown up, about the sexual rapacity of Catherine the Great. While it is true that she shocked the Russian court, with the number and age of her lovers, there is no truth in the rumour of her death by stallion. Unhappily married to the Grand Duke Peter, a man who preferred to play with his toy soldiers in the bedroom, they failed to produce an heir, and Catherine turned her attentions to a certain Sergey Saltykov, who fathered the future Tsar Paul I. Six months into the reign of Peter III, Catherine, supported by the Imperial Guard, staged a successful coup against her husband and became Empress. It was her ambition, to transform a vast but semi-barbaric country, with the cultural and political reforms of Enlightenment Europe. In this timely and fascinating biography, Virginia Rounding reveals an extraordinary woman in all her complexity.

About this title

About the Author

Virginia Rounding is the author of Les Grandes Horizontales (2003), is fluent in French and Russian (vital for the source material of her new book). She lives in London (EC1).

From the Back Cover

Extract to come

From the Inside Flap

Dutiful daughter, frustrated wife, passionate lover, domineering mother, doting grandmother, devoted friend, tireless legislator, generous patron of artists and philosophers the Empress Catherine II, the Great, was all these things, and more. Her reign, the longest in Russian Imperial history, lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during those years she built on the work begun by her most famous predecessor, Peter the Great, to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London in the beauty of its architecture, the glittering splendour of its Court and the magnificence of its art collections. Yet the great Catherine was not even Russian by birth and had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne; she seized it and held on to it, through wars, rebellions and plagues, by the force of her personality, by her charm and determination, and by an unshakeable belief in her own destiny.

This is the story of Catherine the woman, whom power alone could never satisfy, for she also wanted love, affection, friendship and humour. She found these in letter-writing, in grandchildren, in gardens, architecture and greyhounds as well as in a succession of lovers which gave rise to salacious rumours throughout Europe. The real Catherine, however, was more interesting than any rumour.
Using many of Catherine s own words from her voluminous correspondence and other documents, as well as contemporary accounts by courtiers, ambassadors and foreign visitors, Virginia Rounding seeks to penetrate the character of this most powerful, fascinating and surprisingly sympathetic of eighteenth century women.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091799929
• ISBN 13: 9780091799922
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 592