A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d' Orléans, 1652-1722

A Woman's Life in the Court of the Sun King: Letters of Liselotte von der Pfalz, Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d' Orléans, 1652-1722 by Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780801831591.

On 16 November 1671, Liselotte von der Pfalz, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Elector of Palatine, was married to Philippe dOrléans, "Monsieur," the only brother of Louis XIV. The marriage was not to be a happy one. Liselotte (known in France as Elisabeth Charlotte, Duchesse dOrléans, or "Madame") was full of intellectual energy and moral rigor. Homesick for her native Germany, she felt temperamentally ill-suited to life at the French court. The homosexual Monsieur, deeply immersed in the pleasures and intrigues of the court, shared few of his wifes interests. Yet, for the next fifty years, Liselotte remained in France, never far from the center of one of the most glorious courts of Europe. And throughout this period, she wrote letters -- sometimes as many as forty week -- to her friends and relatives in Germany. It is from this extraordinary body of correspondence that A Womans Life in the Court of the Sun King has been fashioned. As introduced and translated by Elborg Forster, the letters have become the remarkable personal narrative of Liselottes transformation from an innocent, yet outspoken, girl into a formidable observer of great events and human folly.