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    Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte
    Unavailable
    Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte
    Unavailable
    Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte
    Ebook369 pages7 hours

    Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte

    By Flora Fraser

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    'Fraser cleverly contrasts Pauline's callous offloading of successive lovers ... The success of a biography of an un-improving subject like this is whether or not we miss them at its close ... Pauline was clearly irresistible company' Literary Review

    Celebrated for her looks, notorious for her passions, immortalised by Antonio Canova's statue and always deeply loyal to her brother, Pauline Bonaparte Borghese is a fascinating figure.

    At the turn of the nineteenth century she was considered by many to be the most beautiful woman in Europe. She shocked the continent with the boldness of her love affairs, her opulent wardrobe and jewels and, most famously, her decision to pose nearly nude for Canova's sculpture, which has been replicated in countless ways through the years.

    But just as remarkable for Pauline's private life was her fidelity to the emperor (if not to her husbands). She was witness to Napoleon's great victories in Italy, and she was often with him and her rival for his loyalty, the Empress Josephine, at Malmaison. When he was exiled to Elba, Pauline was the only sibling to follow him there, and after Waterloo she begged to be allowed to join him at Saint Helena.

    No biographer has gone so deeply into the sources or so closely examined one of the seminal relationships of the man who shaped modern Europe. In Venus of Empire, Flora Fraser casts new light on the Napoleonic era while crafting a dynamic, vivid portrait of mesmerising woman.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMar 11, 2012
    ISBN9781408832554
    Unavailable
    Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte
    Author

    Flora Fraser

    Flora Fraser is the author of Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma Hamilton, The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline, Princesses: The Daughters of George III, Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte and George & Martha Washington: A Revolutionary Marriage, which won the 2016 George Washington Prize. Flora was named after the Scottish heroine Flora Macdonald, whose story she tells in Pretty Young Rebel. Flora Fraser lives in London.

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    Reviews for Venus of Empire

    2.5/5

    2 ratings2 reviews

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    • 3/5
      A good overview of Pauline Bonaparte's life. While Pauline never makes for dull reading, I do wish the author had ventured to provide more definitive answers about some aspects of Pauline's life. For example, rumors are mentioned of an affair between Pauline and her brother Napoleon, but Fraser refrains from addressing the truth of these rumors, leaving the reader with maybe or maybe not as the biographer's take on the rumors. Nevertheless, very entertaining.
    • 2/5
      Although I suppose that Flora Fraser has done an adequate job as a historian, I personally was thoroughly bored for most of the book. I attribute this to the rather inconsequential subject, though perhaps it is the writing. Pauline Bonaparte was apparently extremely beautiful and alluring, and she was the favorite sister of Napoleon. This allowed her to devote her trivial life to truly obnoxious behavior, one of the most striking instances being requiring her ladies to lay on the floor so that she could rest her feet on their throats, in lieu of a footstool. If she charmed British aristocrats and the Pope and Cardinals by her beauty, the more fool they. That beauty seems to be enough for Fraser: apparently Pauline's chief claim on our attention is being the scantily-clad model for the famous Canova statue. I could see this as an article in a magazine, but spread over a couple of hundred pages, it wore thin fast.