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Article: To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette.(Book review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- December 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To the Scaffold: The Life of Marie Antoinette. By Carolly Erickson. (New York: St. Martin's Griffin Press, 2004. Pp. 384. $17.95.)
The pathos of Marie Antoinette's vertiginous decline from the court glamor of Versailles to the brutal finality of the guillotine has always attracted biographers. The fifteenth daughter of the tough and hardworking Empress Maria Theresa, she was married off to the future Louis XVI in 1770 to seal a "diplomatic revolution" that had reversed centuries of hostility between Austria and France. She soon had ample reason to regret her fate, not just because of the weak personality of her new husband but also because of the complex and ...