Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage - Hardcover

Bruce, Evangeline

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0297816098 ISBN 13: 9780297816096

Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995

Synopsis

No rags to riches story can compare with that of Napoleon and Josephine, two outsiders who rose to become Emperor and Empress of the French Republic. This joint biography embraces the lives not only of the two central figures, but of all the vital personalities of the revolutionary era Josephine's career led her into the world of powerful political salons and into prisons where she narrowly escaped the guillotine. Napoleon's fierce ambition raised him to prominence from the time of his first meeting with the reluctant Josephine. As his wife she was to meet the implacable hostility of the Bonaparte clan whose intigues against her provided a savage backdrop to her marriage.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Antonia Fraser explains why this is one of her favourites...
The marriage of the Corsican-born Napoleon, then a young army officer, to the languid, promiscuous Creole beauty, Josephine de Beauharnais, brought together two complete opposites. Josephine, the widow of a man guillotined in the Terror, was indeed extremely reluctant to take the plunge and it was only the need for a protector which swayed her. Napoleon on the other hand was physically obsessed by Josephine, but also believed that her political influence in the salons of Paris would help him in his urgent struggle to succeed. What is so compelling about this book - apart from the tempestuous love story it tells - is the brilliant use Evangeline Bruce makes of the contrast between to the two worlds from which the couple came. Her acute sense of social observation recreates the background of the Napoleons, explains the hostility to Josephine, the power of Napoleon's mother, before passing to Josephine's own exotic early life and then, unforgettably, the Paris of the Directorate and the Empire.

About this edition

• Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0297816098
• ISBN 13: 9780297816096
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 544