Volume 54, Number 1 · January 11, 2007
The Perils of Antoinette
By Hilary Mantel
Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution
by Caroline Weber
Henry Holt, 412 pp., $27.50
A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette's Perfumer
by Elisabeth de Feydeau, translated from the French by Jane Lizop
I.B. Tauris, 140 pp., $26.95
She arrived naked; on an island in the Rhine, on May 7, 1770, in a pavilion especially built for the purpose, the Austrian princess Antonia was stripped of her clothes under the cold and curious gaze of a party of aristocrats. She was fourteen years old, and she cried while this happened. A keen wind nipped between the Gobelins tapestries in which the pavilion was draped; a steady rain began to fall and run through the pavilion's roof.
Review, 5968 words
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