Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting History with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great PDF Download

Author: Lisa Hilton
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 0008389616
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 80

View

Book Description
The bestselling author and historian Lisa Hilton picks up the mythical ‘City of Ladies’ where the medieval writer Christine de Pisan left off, continuing a conversation about gender and greatness that began more than six hundred years ago.

Author: Karl Schlögel
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150954660X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

View

Book Description
Can a drop of perfume tell the story of the twentieth century? Can a smell bear the traces of history? What can we learn about the history of the twentieth century by examining the fate of perfumes? In this remarkable book, Karl Schlögel unravels the interconnected histories of two of the world’s most celebrated perfumes. In tsarist Russia, two French perfumers – Ernest Beaux and Auguste Michel – developed related fragrances honouring Catherine the Great for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. During the Russian Revolution and Civil War, Beaux fled Russia and took the formula for his perfume with him to France, where he sought to adapt it to his new French circumstances. He presented Coco Chanel with a series of ten fragrance samples in his laboratory and, after smelling each, she chose number five – the scent that would later go by the name Chanel No. 5. Meanwhile, as the perfume industry was being revived in Soviet Russia, Auguste Michel used his original fragrance to create Red Moscow for the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. Piecing together the intertwined histories of these two famous perfumes, which shared a common origin, Schlögel tells a surprising story of power, intrigue and betrayal that offers an altogether unique perspective on the turbulent events and high politics of the twentieth century. This brilliant account of perfume and politics in twentieth-century Europe will be of interest to a wide general readership.

Author: Dosso Dossi
Publisher: Getty Publications
ISBN: 9780892365050
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 436

View

Book Description
Dosso Dossi has long been considered one of Renaissance Italy's most intriguing artists. Although a wealth of documents chronicles his life, he remains, in many ways, an enigma, and his art continues to be as elusive as it is compelling. In Dosso's Fate, leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines examine the social, intellectual, and historical contexts of his art, focusing on the development of new genres of painting, questions of style and chronology, the influence of courtly culture, and the work of his collaborators, as well as his visual and literary sources and his painting technique. The result is an important and original contribution not only to literature on Dosso Dossi but also to the study of cultural history in early modern Italy.

Author: Jean Plaidy
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307887553
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 505

View

Book Description
Some said she was an elegant seductress. Others swore she was an incestuous murderess. It didn’t matter what they called her. She was the most dangerous and sought-after woman in all of Rome. She was Lucrezia Borgia. Born into Rome’s notorious Borgia family, young Lucrezia led a life colored by violence and betrayal. Now, married for the second time at just eighteen, she hopes for happiness with her handsome husband, Alfonso. But faced with brutal murder, she’s soon torn between her love for her husband and her devotion to her brother Cesare . . . And in the days when the Borgias ruled Italy, no one was safe from the long arm of their power. Even Lucrezia. In this compelling story of a beautiful woman caught up in a tortuous web of fear and love, Jean Plaidy sheds light on the much maligned Lucrezia and vividly brings her to life.

Author: ARTHUR SYMONS
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand
ISBN: 9361154850
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 180

View

Book Description
Figures of Several Centuries" is a collection of essays written by Arthur Symons, a British poet, critic, and essayist. The book features Symons' astute observations and critiques of a wide range of literary and artistic luminaries over several centuries. Known for his contributions to English Decadent poetry and affiliated with the Symbolist movement, Symons examines the lives and works of a variety of characters in the arts and literature. The essays address a wide range of subjects, such as debates on poets, authors, and artists from many eras of history. As a literary critic, Symons analyses each person with a lyrical sensibility and a profound respect for art. In addition to providing historical context, the collection highlights the importance of several creative figures over time in various historical eras. With its insight into the rich fabric of artistic expression across the centuries, "Figures of Several Centuries" advances knowledge of the relationship between art, literature, and culture.

Author: Ferdinand Gregorovius
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780857068088
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

View

Book Description
A legend of beauty and seduction The very name of Lucrezia Borgia remains, some 500 years after her time, enough to send a frisson of a thrill down the spine-particularly of men! The Lucrezia of legend has become an archetypal 'femme fatale'-beautiful, seductive and potentially deadly. She was a member of the notorious Borgia family who under the ruthless Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander IV) presided over the period of the Renaissance Papacy. Of her brothers, Cesare, who bore a particularly bloody and ruthless reputation has become the most notorious and infamous. To add inevitable spice to their story, the two were said to have indulged in a torrid, incestuous affair. Fact often parts company with popular myth, but there is no doubt that Lucrezia, although actually illegitimate, was a beautiful, sophisticated and highly educated woman. She spoke five languages fluently. It was inevitable that a young woman of this background would become a political bargaining tool in the game of marriage and power. Indeed to further the Borgia family ambitions she was married three times. To what degree she participated in these machinations has, of course, become a matter of speculation and an essential component of this famous lady's allure. Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket; our hardbacks are cloth bound and feature gold foil lettering on their spines and fabric head and tail bands.

Author: Josephine Tey
Publisher: DigiCat
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 173

View

Book Description
Alan Grant, Scotland Yard Inspector is feeling bored while confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. Marta Hallard, an actress friend of his, suggests that he should amuse himself by researching a historical mystery. She brings him some pictures of historical characters, aware of Grant's interest in human faces. He becomes intrigued by a portrait of King Richard III. He prides himself on being able to read a person's character from his appearance, and King Richard seems to him a gentle, kind and wise man. Why is everyone so sure that he was a cruel murderer? With the help of other friends and acquaintances, Grant investigates Richard's life and the case of the Princes in the Tower, testing out his theories on the doctors and nurses who attend to him. Grant spends weeks pondering historical information and documents with the help of Brent Carradine, a likable young American researcher working in the British Museum. Using his detective's logic, he tries to come to the conclusion whether the claim of Richard being a murderer is a fabrication of Tudor propaganda, or was he really a monstrous hunchback. The Daughter of Time was voted greatest mystery novel of all time by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.

Author: Josephine Tey
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446429334
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 226

View

Book Description
'A detective story with a very considerable difference. Ingenious, stimulating and very enjoyable' SUNDAY TIMES 'As interesting and enjoyable a book as they will meet in a month of Sundays' OBSERVER Scotland Yard inspector Alan Grant, recovering from a broken leg, becomes fascinated with a contemporary portrait of Richard III, believed to have brutally killed his brother's children - the Princes in the Tower - to make his crown secure. But is the hunchback with such a sensitive, noble face really one of the world's most heinous villains? Or was he the victim of one of the most insidious plots in history? 'One of the best mysteries of all time' NEW YORK TIMES 'Suspense is achieved by unexpected twists and extremely competent storytelling . . . credible and convincing' SPECTATOR

Author: Virginia Rounding
Publisher: Hutchinson Radius
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 616

View

Book Description
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.

Author: Stacy Schiff
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316121800
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 484

View

Book Description
The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer brings to life the most intriguing woman in the history of the world: Cleopatra, the last queen of Egypt. Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. Ultimately she dispensed with an ambitious sister as well; incest and assassination were family specialties. Cleopatra appears to have had sex with only two men. They happen, however, to have been Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, among the most prominent Romans of the day. Both were married to other women. Cleopatra had a child with Caesar and -- after his murder -- three more with his protégé. Already she was the wealthiest ruler in the Mediterranean; the relationship with Antony confirmed her status as the most influential woman of the age. The two would together attempt to forge a new empire, in an alliance that spelled their ends. Cleopatra has lodged herself in our imaginations ever since. Famous long before she was notorious, Cleopatra has gone down in history for all the wrong reasons. Shakespeare and Shaw put words in her mouth. Michelangelo, Tiepolo, and Elizabeth Taylor put a face to her name. Along the way, Cleopatra's supple personality and the drama of her circumstances have been lost. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order. Rich in detail, epic in scope, Schiff 's is a luminous, deeply original reconstruction of a dazzling life.