A Nervous Splendour: Vienna 1888-1889
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A masterwork of narrative history, A Nervous Splendour chronicles the final days of January 1889 in Vienna, weaving together the city's glittering imperial life with the shocking tragedy at Mayerling, where Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his young mistress, Mary Vetsera, were found dead in an apparent suicide pact. Frederic Morton reconstructs this pivotal moment with novelistic precision, drawing on diaries, letters, and police records to illuminate the private anguishes and public spectacles unfolding simultaneously across the Habsburg capital. The tone is at once elegiac and electric, capturing a city poised on the edge of an era — waltzing through opera premieres and aristocratic balls even as its imperial dynasty trembled. Morton illustrates how the death of Rudolf was not merely a royal scandal but a premonition of the collapse of an entire world order, the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. The result is a richly atmospheric portrait of a civilization in brilliant, anxious decline.
Author: Frederic Morton
Format: Hardback
Published: 2006, The Folio Society
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Slipcase: Good
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
A masterwork of narrative history, A Nervous Splendour chronicles the final days of January 1889 in Vienna, weaving together the city's glittering imperial life with the shocking tragedy at Mayerling, where Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria and his young mistress, Mary Vetsera, were found dead in an apparent suicide pact. Frederic Morton reconstructs this pivotal moment with novelistic precision, drawing on diaries, letters, and police records to illuminate the private anguishes and public spectacles unfolding simultaneously across the Habsburg capital. The tone is at once elegiac and electric, capturing a city poised on the edge of an era — waltzing through opera premieres and aristocratic balls even as its imperial dynasty trembled. Morton illustrates how the death of Rudolf was not merely a royal scandal but a premonition of the collapse of an entire world order, the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. The result is a richly atmospheric portrait of a civilization in brilliant, anxious decline.