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cahnMore diaries of our favorite 18th-century Prussian diary-keeper have been unearthed and have been synopsized!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
January 18th: Blessed be thou to me! Under your light, my Prince Heinrich was born!
Reading requests and recs
Date: 2022-08-07 12:35 pm (UTC)1. The next time you have time to summarize a book for salon,
As you know, since the beginning of salon I've badly wanted a modern Russian perspective on Elizaveta's reign, and this is the most promising I've found in English translation. I would totally read it myself and not ask you, except it's an out of print limited edition that has proved impossible to acquire so far, no matter how much money I'm willing to throw at it. (I will let you know if that changes between now and when you have time.)
The author has written two other books that I've read: one is personality-focused (see below), and the other is politics-focused (The Reforms of Peter the Great), so this one could go either way in terms of readability.
2. I continue to hope for a summary of the Lafayette bio when you have time, but it's less important, as I've already read it and
Recs:
1. Benjamin Kaplan's Cunegonde's Kidnapping (Kindle, Stabi via interlibrary loan only, sadly), the true story of a religious mini-war that broke out on the Dutch-German border in 1762 over which faith a baby with a Calvinist mother and a Catholic father should be baptized in. I can recommend it for narrative readability, and it might be of interest to both of you!
2. Evgenii Anisimov's Five Empresses (Kindle, Stabi) is a gossipy take on the lives of of Catherine I, Anna Ivanovna, Anna Leopoldovna, Elizaveta, and Catherine the Great. Hardly any politics or military history pokes its head in,
(I suspect the prose style suffers a little from translation, it's probably more elegant in Russian, but the author's personality still shows through.)
Request for a rec:
1. Anything good on Louis XI, either in English or German?
Re: Reading requests and recs
Date: 2022-08-07 04:10 pm (UTC)Elizabeth enjoyed reading messages from envoys, especially those that gave a detailed description of the ups and downs and of court life and the intrigues going on at the courts to which they had been appointed.
Envoys are where it's at, even the Czarina thinks so!
Also:
The empress read foreign newspapers with special curiosity. Excerpts from them were made for her so that she could keep up with the most important European rumors and scandals.
I must say, I'm tickled by the idea that Elizaveta must have been having excerpts made of many of the same rumors and scandals that we're having excerpts of made!
Re: Reading requests and recs
Date: 2022-08-08 05:33 am (UTC)Re: Reading requests and recs
Date: 2022-08-09 04:43 am (UTC)This is AWESOME. You can just refer to me as Empress Cahn from now on :DDDDD
(I definitely do feel as spoiled as an empress, though! I am like "wouldn't it be nice if someone catered to my every whim to keep up with the most important European rumors and scandals??" And... yes! Yes, it is very nice! <3 :D )
Re: Reading requests and recs
Date: 2022-08-09 01:26 pm (UTC)I feel equally spoiled myself! I even get special request write-ups! And of course, if not for you asking questions and waxing enthusiastic, Selena and I would not have spent 3 years just telling each other about history, it would not have been nearly as much fun. :D <3