Anne Flosnik
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The first Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) was a soldier of such genius that a lavish palace, Blenheim, was built to honor his triumphs. Succeeding generations of Churchills sometimes achieved distinction but also included profligates and womanizers, and were saddled with the ruinous upkeep of Blenheim. The family fortunes were revived in the nineteenth century by the huge dowries of New York society beauties Jennie Jerome (Winston's mother) and Consuelo...
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She was the quintessential queen: statuesque, regal, dazzlingly beautiful. Her royal birth gave her claim to the thrones of two nations; her marriage to the young French dauphin promised to place a third glorious crown on her noble head. Instead, Mary Stuart became the victim of her own impulsive heart, scandalizing her world with a foolish passion that would lead to abduction, rape, and even murder. Betrayed by those she most trusted, she would be...
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"The story of one of the most remarkable women of the medieval world, as you have never read it before. In Joan of Arch : a history, Helen Castor tells this gripping story afresh: forwards, not backwards. Instead of an icon, she gives us a living, breathing woman confronting the challenges of faith and doubt, a roaring girl who, in fighting the English, was also taking sides in a bloody civil war. We meet this extraordinary girl amid the tumultuous...
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'Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same'. These were the heartbreaking words of a seventeen-year-old girl, Lady Jane Grey, as she stood on the scaffold on a cold February morning in 1554. Her death for high treason sent shockwaves through the Tudor world and served as a gruesome reminder to all who aspired to the Crown that the axe could fall at any time.While the story of 'the Nine Days Queen' has been told,...
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The little-known story of the mother of Mary, Queen of Scots and her feud with the Tudors: "Will fascinate anyone who loves a simmering, twisting tale" (All About History).
Mary, Queen of Scots continues to intrigue both historians and the general public—but the story of her mother, Marie de Guise, is much less well known. A political power in her own right, she was born into the powerful and ambitious Lorraine family,...
Mary, Queen of Scots continues to intrigue both historians and the general public—but the story of her mother, Marie de Guise, is much less well known. A political power in her own right, she was born into the powerful and ambitious Lorraine family,...
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From acclaimed literary biographer Claire Tomalin, a complex and fascinating exploration of the early life of the influential writer and public figure H. G. Wells
How did the first forty years of H. G. Wells’ life shape the father of science fiction?
From his impoverished childhood in a working-class English family and determination to educate himself at any cost to his complicated marriages, love affair with socialism, and the serious ill health...
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Pub. Date
2019
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English
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In this now classic biography, Linda Lear offers the astonishing portrait of an extraordinary woman who gave us some of the most beloved children's books of all time. Beatrix Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but The Tale of Peter Rabbit brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with...
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Anna Leonowens, a proper Englishwoman, was an unlikely candidate to change the course of Siamese (Thai) history. A young widow and mother, her services were engaged in the 1860's by King Mongkut of Siam to help him communicate with foreign governments and be the tutor to his children and favored concubines. Stepping off the steamer from London, Anna found herself in an exotic land she could have only dreamed. It was a lush landscape of mystic faiths...
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A look at the tragically short life of the only daughter of Britain's King George IV who won the heart of a nation.
As the only child of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick, Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) was the heiress presumptive to the throne. Her parents' marriage had already broken up by the time she was born. She had a difficult childhood and a turbulent adolescence, but she was popular with the public, who looked to her to...
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Frances Hodgson Burnett's favorite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.
On...
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Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number were no fewer than three popes and a powerful and influential queen of France. Their influence brought about an explosion of Florentine art and architecture - Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and...
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This biography evokes the pervasive importance of religion to Queen Victoria's life but also that life's centrality to the religion of Victorians around the globe. The first comprehensive exploration of Victoria's religiosity, it shows how moments in her life-from her accession to her marriage and her successive bereavements-enlarged how she defined and lived her faith.
Drawing on a systematic reading of her journals and a rich selection of manuscripts...
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One hundred vivid portraits of real-life characters bring to life the highs and lows of Rome's dramatic history.
A vibrant portrait of a lost world, A History of Ancient Rome in 100 Lives reveals the mightiest civilization of antiquity through the eyes of one hundred of its citizens. The book gives a voice not just to Rome's most famous generals and rulers, such as Caesar and Caligula, but also to its builders, sculptors, poets, historians, gladiators,...
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Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, is the youngest of the famously witty brood that includes the writers Jessica and Nancy, who wrote when Deborah was born, "How disgusting of the poor darling to go and be a girl." Deborah's effervescent memoir Wait for Me! chronicles her remarkable life, from an eccentric but happy childhood in the Oxfordshire countryside, to tea with Adolf Hitler and her controversially political sister Unity in 1937, to her...
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After the death of his brother, Warren Lewis lived at The Kilns in Oxford, edited his famous brother's letters, and did a little writing of his own. Then he got a letter from a stranger on the far side of the world. Over the years that followed, he and Blanche Biggs, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, shared a vibrant correspondence. These conversations encompassed their views on faith, their politics, their humor, the legacy of C. S. Lewis, and their...