Catherine the Great: Autocrat and Empress of All Russia PDF Download
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Author: Ian Grey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Empresses
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Catherine II of Russia was the most remarkable of the Enlightened Autocrats of the eighteenth century. She was a woman of compelling charm and elegance, a personality both enigmatic and fascinating. She had a prodigious appetite for work, great intellectual curiosity, boundless ambition and vanity, and at a time of license she was notorious for the number of her lovers. Her prodigal expenditure and her patronage of the arts made her reign an era of splendor, while her foreign policy and conquests carried Russian power and prestige to new heights. She cast a spell over most of her contemporaries in Russia and in Western Europe, and the spell has lingered: indeed, Voltaire's apostrophe -- "Happy the writer who a century hence will produce the history of Catherine II" -- well reflects the approach of most historians to her. But Catherine and her reign need to be examined afresh. - Preface.
Author: Ian Grey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Empresses
Languages : en
Pages : 272
Get Book Here
Book Description
Catherine II of Russia was the most remarkable of the Enlightened Autocrats of the eighteenth century. She was a woman of compelling charm and elegance, a personality both enigmatic and fascinating. She had a prodigious appetite for work, great intellectual curiosity, boundless ambition and vanity, and at a time of license she was notorious for the number of her lovers. Her prodigal expenditure and her patronage of the arts made her reign an era of splendor, while her foreign policy and conquests carried Russian power and prestige to new heights. She cast a spell over most of her contemporaries in Russia and in Western Europe, and the spell has lingered: indeed, Voltaire's apostrophe -- "Happy the writer who a century hence will produce the history of Catherine II" -- well reflects the approach of most historians to her. But Catherine and her reign need to be examined afresh. - Preface.
Author: Susan Jaques
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1681771144
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 655
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Book Description
A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and herself crowned the Empress of Russia. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed "glutton for art" and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.
Author: Catherine the Great
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307432432
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Empress Catherine II brought Europe to Russia, and Russia to Europe, during her long and eventful reign (1762—96). She fostered the culture of the Enlightenment and greatly expanded the immense empire created by Czar Ivan the Terrible, shifting the balance of power in Europe eastward. Famous for her will to power and for her dozen lovers, Catherine was also a prolific and gifted writer. Fluent in French, Russian, and German, Catherine published political theory, journalism, comedies, operas, and history, while writing thousands of letters as she corresponded with Voltaire and other public figures. The Memoirs of Catherine the Great provides an unparalleled window into eighteenth-century Russia and the mind of an absolute ruler. With insight, humor, and candor, Catherine presents her eyewitness account of history, from her whirlwind entry into the Russian court in 1744 at age fourteen as the intended bride of Empress Elizabeth I’s nephew, the eccentric drunkard and future Peter III, to her unhappy marriage; from her two children, several miscarriages, and her and Peter’s numerous affairs to the political maneuvering that enabled Catherine to seize the throne from him in 1762. Catherine’s eye for telling details makes for compelling reading as she describes the dramatic fall and rise of her political fortunes. This definitive new translation from the French is scrupulously faithful to her words and is the first for which translators have consulted original manuscripts written in Catherine’s own hand. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in Catherine the Great, Russian history, or the eighteenth century.
Author: Vincent Cronin
Publisher: Harvill Press
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 382
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Book Description
Catherine the Great was one of the most remarkable women in history. Born in 1729 into the family of one of the lesser princelings of Germany, she was married to the heir to the Russian throne at the age of 16. The marriage was an unhappy one and Catherine was banished from her husband's palace but, when Peter came to the throne and was then ousted from it in the space of a few months, it was Catherine who replaced him and became Empress. She ruled her vast domain for more than thirty years, until her death in 1796, and greatly expanded its territories. In her lifetime and since she has been infamous for her intrigues, her possible involvement in political murders, including that of her dethroned husband, and her numerous love affairs. Vincent Cronin's highly readable biography sifts the facts from the legends in Catherine's extraordinary life.
Author: Virginia Rounding
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780312378639
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 612
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Book Description
RA great thumping triumph of a bookS ("London Telegraph"), this is the first comprehensive modern biography of Catherine the Great to explore her both as a woman and empress.
Author: Catherine Curzon
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147384553X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 151
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Book Description
This lively history of Europe’s royal families through the 18th and early 19th centuries reveals the decadence and danger of court life. As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history. Meanwhile, in France, Revolution stalks the land. Life in the Georgian Court pulls back the curtain on the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia, and the epoch-defining royal family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover. Beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Historian Catherine Curzon reveals the private lives of these very public figures, vividly recounting the arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and the scandals that rocked polite society. Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, King George IV makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage, and Marie Antoinette begins her final journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell. Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.
Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307266524
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 817
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Book Description
"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.
Author: Edward Arthur Brayley Hodgetts
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Russia
Languages : en
Pages : 390
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Book Description
Author: Rosina Beckman
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1538301830
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 130
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Book Description
To truly understand today's Russia, it is important to look back through the centuries to the figures, events, and neighboring cultures that have shaped it into what it is today. Starting with the rise of the Rus in the first millennium, this book traces the first thousand or so years of Russian history. The rise and fall of Kiev as the Rus center, the Novgorod Republic, the Mongol Invasion, the rise of first Rurikid and then Romanov Muscovy, and the indelible influences of Peter I and Catherine II, both of whom earned the moniker "the Great" are all covered.
Author: Virginia Rounding
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429940905
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 465
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Book Description
The dramatic story of Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia—A penetrating and deeply personal study that gives profound psychological insight into their marriage and how it shaped the events that engulfed them. There are few characters in history about whom opinion has been more divided than the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, and his wife the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna. On one hand, they are venerated as saints, innocent victims of Bolshevik assassins, and on the other they are impugned as the unwitting harbingers of revolution and imperial collapse, blamed for all the ills that befell the Russian people in the 20th century. Theirs was also a tragic love story; for whatever else can be said of them, there can be no doubt that Alix and Nicky adored one another. Soon after their engagement, Alix wrote in her fiancé's diary: "Ever true and ever loving, faithful, pure and strong as death"—words which met their fulfillment twenty-four years later in a blood-spattered cellar in Ekaterinburg. Through the letters and diaries written by the couple and by those around them, Virginia Rounding presents an intimate, penetrating, and fresh portrayal of these two complex figures and of their passion—their love and their suffering. She explores the nature and possible causes of the Empress's ill health, and examines in depth the enigmatic triangular relationship between Nicky, Alix and their ‘favourite,' Ania Vyrubova, protégée of the infamous Rasputin, extracting the meaning from words left unsaid, from hints and innuendoes.. The story of Alix and Nicky, of their four daughters known collectively as ‘OTMA' and of their hemophiliac little boy Alexei, is endlessly fascinating, and Rounding makes these characters come alive, presenting them in all their human dimensions and expertly leading the reader into their vanished world.
