The most recommended books about Marie Antoinette

I am perhaps more familiar with – and fonder of – Marie Antoinette than I am of any other historical personage. Emersed in French history since an early age, I have had a near-lifetime fascination for this complicated woman – who never said, “Let them eat cake!” 

Having researched Antoinette exhaustively (most recently, in connection with her periodic appearances in my own books), since first reading Evelyn Lever’s masterful, beautifully-written work some twenty years ago, I have found myself frequently returning to it. I am drawn to it for its depth and detail, as well as her balanced treatment of an, in many ways, controversial figure. I recommend it as it is a perfect introduction to the life of a captivating woman, as well as presenting a highly satisfying experience for any lover of fine biography. 

When you read the incredible life of some people you don't really need to read fictional stories.

What a life Elisabeth Vigée - Le Brun had! It looks like a wonderful novel. She was a great French portrait painter (she painted 660 portraits!) during an age of revolution.

In 1778, at the age of 23, she painted her first portrait of Queen Marie Antoinette. 

Elisabeth Vigée- Le Brun became one of the rare woman to be member of the prestigious French Royal Academy of paintings. After being exploited by an unfaithful husband she had to face the French Revolution.

She left France and traveled to Europe until the cold and far away Russia. 

How much talent and energy did Elisabeth Vigée - Le Brun have to develop to be one of the best portraits painter of her time?

If you like art, the refined 18th century and audacious women, you… show more.

This is also a book I read long ago, and it made me want to write historical fiction novels. This is an astounding story of a young peasant woman who is swept up into the Parisian society of King Louis XVI.

The author's attention to historical details in the construction of Versailles and the French Revolution is a standard that I have judged most novels by. It's a beautiful multi-generational story of love and loss, and I'll admit to tears when reading this book. I usually avoid sad books. I want love to never end. Having said that, I'm so glad I read it, and I was amazed at how much French history I learned!

This collection of articles offers an intriguing approach to the topic of women, power, and sex by focusing on the many uses of Marie Antoinette. The essays, by prominent historians, art historians, and literary scholars, examine Marie Antoinette as a “site of history” where political and cultural contests occurred. The authors analyze pamphlets, archival materials, portraits, French Revolutionary pornography, and modern films to consider the central questions Marie Antoinette raised about her identity as a foreign queen, woman, wife, mother, and political figure.

She embodied the contradictions in old regime politics, culture, and gender identity and has been used subsequently to address political and gender issues to the present. Each essay offers a distinct, intriguing perspective on the reciprocal influence of this queen and the history of France. The collection reveals the wealth of purposes this queen served and the rich variety of interpretations she provoked.

How many people know what happened to Marie Antoinette’s daughter? This book focuses on this tragic, formidable woman and her extraordinary life, from her birth in a crowded bedroom where they had to break the widows to provide fresh air to her fainting mother, to her three year imprisonment during the Terror, to her secret escape from France after the murder of her family. She found refuge in several European countries and married her cousin, the Duc d’Angoulême. Many historians claim that on the abdication of his father (Charles X, a brother of the executed Louis XVI), he became King for twenty minutes and his wife, thereby, became briefly the last Queen of France of the senior Bourbon line. 

Juliet Gray brought Marie Antoinette to life in this book. We got to understand her from such a young girl who had so much pressure put on her. We see her as kind and childlike but we also see how Marie does mature into a woman who strives to have a loving marriage with her husband while they rule France.

A concise, compelling, and beautifully told story by one of pre-World War II Europe’s finest writers.  Largely based on correspondence between Marie-Antoinette and her mother, Austrian Empress Maria-Theresa, then with the love of her life, Swedish diplomat Count Axel von Fersen, Zweig’s account clarifies the queen’s character development with grace and understanding, and paints a well-rounded, nuanced picture of Marie-Antoinette from her personal pleasures as a mother and lover, to her suffering and courage during the Revolution.  

This was one of the first studies of Marie Antoinette that aimed to take seriously her style as a critical political tool, one that worked both for the ill-fated French queen and against her. The study of bodily adornment, clothing, and fashion choices are now a key part of how we understand gender politics and the politics of the body both in history and in our own lives. 

Importantly, Weber situates Marie Antoinette’s understanding of the importance of her fashion in the wider context of the culture of display at Versailles, where close examination of bodies in ceremonial, sartorial, and sexual labour was the norm. From caca dauphin to the Diamond Necklace Affair, Weber traces the changing dynamics of Marie Antoinette’s relationship with fashion, from her time as a trendsetter to the ways in which it became part of a compelling narrative for the queen’s downfall.

Antoine Lilti’s ground-breaking study about celebrity demonstrates that a phenomenon we generally associate with modern culture and cinema has much older roots: roots that go back to eighteenth-century Europe. Thanks to the rise of the press and the development of new advertising techniques, such figures as Voltaire, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Marie-Antoinette, or Napoléon saw their private lives on public display and learned to navigate the privileges and pitfalls of a new form of social prestige. Elegantly written and accessible to non-specialists, this book is particularly useful to differentiate between forms of public recognition that are connected but ultimately distinct, such as glory, reputation, celebrity, and posterity. The work of a major historian of eighteenth-century France, The Invention of Celebrity explains why the age of Enlightenment was a laboratory in which our modern sense of self was invented, while also uncovering the origins of our longing… show more.

Having read numerous books about the French Revolution, amongst my favourites is this fascinating biography of Lucie Dillon – who became Lucie du la Tour du Pin – by Caroline Morehead. I unhesitatingly recommend it, certain that, from Morehead’s striking presentation, most readers will experience a keen sense of what it was like to live during the twilight of the Ancien Régime, and thence on, into and through the nightmare that followed. As an Irish-French aristocrat, whose father commanded the regiment of the Irish Brigade of France that bore the family’s name, whilst her mother was a lady-in-waiting to Marie Antoinette, Lucie was in a singular position to observe and chronicle the tragic upheaval. 

Relying in part on Lucie’s own published memoir, as well as numerous primary sources, including family papers, which her meticulous research uncovered, Morehead tells a powerful story of loss and survival.