The Correspondence of Madame, Princess Palatine, Mother of the Regent of Marie-

Charlotte-Elisabeth, Duchesse d'OrléansProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.8
Word count
579K words
Chapters
58

Tags

English Originals Historical ReappraisalPortrait GalleryLove EntanglementsPower GameMemoirSocial ObservationFemale Perspective

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Correspondence of Madame, Princess Palatine, Mother of the Regent; of Marie-Author: Orléans, Charlotte-Elisabeth, duchesse d', 1652-1722,Language: English, Class: DC: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: France, Andorra, Monaco, Release Date: Jul 23, 2013

Editor's review

This is an English translation of the letters of Charlotte-Elisabeth, Duchesse d'Orléans, a public-domain historical document. Its value lies in an eyewitness perspective on daily politics, family relations, and court etiquette in the French court and the Regency period; the language is blunt, the detail dense, and personal emotion and judgment frequently surface, bringing readers closer to how people of the time felt than formal histories do. The reading highlight is the immediacy of the epistolary form: the same event recurs across different letters, allowing one to observe how information travels and how positions form. It suits researchers and enthusiasts of French history, court culture, and epistolary literature, and also works as a text for training in reading historical sources. Note that the translation is a selection, so a single letter read out of context is easily misunderstood, and the author's stance is pronounced, so it should not be taken as a neutral account. Reading alongside a chronology of the late Louis XIV and Regency periods is recommended.

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Reading tips

  1. Read a chronology and a table of personal relationships first, then move on to the letters to reduce confusion over names.
  2. Read in chronological order while marking multiple letters about the same event, comparing differences in wording.
  3. After each group of letters, write a three-line summary: event, stance, emotion, building a notebook of historical material.
  4. Look up names and places before continuing, and avoid understanding the old regime through modern official titles.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

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FAQ

What period and figures do these letters mainly concern? The author of the letters is Charlotte-Elisabeth, Princess Palatine and Duchesse d'Orléans, who lived from 1652 to 1722. The content centers on the French court, family relations, and Regency politics, involving many figures and events from the late years of Louis XIV through the regency of the Duc d'Orléans.
Is the English translation reliable? Will it lose the original meaning? The book is a public-domain English translation whose wording reflects the choices of its period and editor, and some letters are abridged. Readers should note that a translation may simplify tone and colloquial expression; key judgments should be checked against notes and historical background, and a single translated sentence should not be taken as a complete rendering of the author's original words.
Can I read it without any background in French history? You can, but you need to build some background first. It is advisable to learn about the late period of Louis XIV, the Regency, and the relationships among the main court figures before reading the letters; otherwise names, titles, and factional ties are easily confused, and reading efficiency drops markedly.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Charlotte-Elisabeth, Duchesse d'Orléans Author · German (Bavarian) · 1652–1722

Charlotte-Elisabeth, Duchesse d'Orléans (1652–1722), was a daughter of the Elector of Bavaria. In 1671 she married Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, and went on to live at the court of Versailles for more than fifty years. The library holds seven of her works, chiefly the volumes of her Memoirs of the Court of Louis XIV and of the Regency, together with a collection of her correspondence with the Princess Palatine and others. Writing with candor and humor, she records the figures, anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes affairs of the court in the age of Louis XIV and the Regency, bringing people and details vividly to life. Her letters and memoirs have long been valued as important primary sources for the study of French court society and political life, and are read with pleasure for their frank and lively narrative.