Cover image for Mrs. Adams in winter : a journey in the last days of Napoleon
Mrs. Adams in winter : a journey in the last days of Napoleon
Title:
Mrs. Adams in winter : a journey in the last days of Napoleon
ISBN:
9780374215811
Edition:
1st ed.
Publication Information:
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010.
Physical Description:
xvi, 364 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Contents:
Saint Petersburg -- From Saint Petersburg to Riga -- From Riga to Berlin -- From Berlin to Eisenach -- From Eisenach to Frankfurt -- From Frankfurt to Paris -- Appendix: Places.
Summary:
Early in 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son left St. Petersburg in a Russian carriage and set out to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. She traveled through the snows of eastern Europe, across the battlefields of Germany, and into a France then experiencing Napoleon's return from Elba. Along the way, she learned what Napoleon's wars had done to Europe, what her old friends in the royal court in Berlin had experienced during the French occupation, how it felt to have her life threatened by reckless soldiers, and how to manage fear. Historian Michael O'Brien reconstructs for the first time that extraordinary passage. This evocative history of the experience of travel in the days of carriages and kings offers a moving portrait of a lady, her difficult marriage, and her conflicted sense of what it meant to be a woman caught between worlds.--From publisher description.
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