The Affair Of The Poisons: Louis Xiv, Madame De Montespan, And One Of History's Great Unsolved Mysteries
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: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the glittering yet treacherous court of Louis XIV, where ambition and survival were inextricably entwined, one of history's most scandalous episodes unfolded — a web of poison, sorcery, and murder that threatened to consume the Sun King himself. The Affair of the Poisons chronicles the notorious poisoning scandal that rocked seventeenth-century France, drawing Madame de Montespan, the king's most powerful royal mistress, into a shadowy underworld of alchemists, fortune-tellers, and alleged child sacrifice, as investigators uncovered a network of crime stretching from the gutters of Paris to the gilded halls of Versailles. Frances Mossiker, celebrated for her meticulous archival research and her gift for narrative biography, reconstructs this extraordinary episode with cinematic vividness and rigorous historical authority. Her prose illuminates the intersection of power, superstition, and desire that defined the Ancien Régime, presenting a portrait of an era in which the boundary between courtly grandeur and criminal darkness was perilously thin. Having also authored The Queen's Necklace and Napoleon and Josephine, Mossiker demonstrates once again her singular ability to resurrect forgotten scandals and return them to urgent, devastating life — leaving the reader to wonder just how many of history's great secrets remain buried still.
Author: Frances Mossiker
Format: Hardback
Published: 1970, Victor Gollancz Ltd
Genre: European history
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In the glittering yet treacherous court of Louis XIV, where ambition and survival were inextricably entwined, one of history's most scandalous episodes unfolded — a web of poison, sorcery, and murder that threatened to consume the Sun King himself. The Affair of the Poisons chronicles the notorious poisoning scandal that rocked seventeenth-century France, drawing Madame de Montespan, the king's most powerful royal mistress, into a shadowy underworld of alchemists, fortune-tellers, and alleged child sacrifice, as investigators uncovered a network of crime stretching from the gutters of Paris to the gilded halls of Versailles. Frances Mossiker, celebrated for her meticulous archival research and her gift for narrative biography, reconstructs this extraordinary episode with cinematic vividness and rigorous historical authority. Her prose illuminates the intersection of power, superstition, and desire that defined the Ancien Régime, presenting a portrait of an era in which the boundary between courtly grandeur and criminal darkness was perilously thin. Having also authored The Queen's Necklace and Napoleon and Josephine, Mossiker demonstrates once again her singular ability to resurrect forgotten scandals and return them to urgent, devastating life — leaving the reader to wonder just how many of history's great secrets remain buried still.