Memoirs of Madame de la Tour du Pin: Laughing and Dancing Our Way to the Precipice

An aristocratic autobiography from the time of the French Revolution.

"From my earliest days I had a feeling that adventures lay in store for me." Madame de La Tour du Pin offers the reader a "faithful picture of myself as I am and as I have been." Written for her son, this intimate document records the changes that befell her family and all those who attended the court of Louis XVI at the time of the French Revolution. A royalist, but also a realist, she concludes that "the rot started at the top and spread downwards." She came back to France after a three-year exile and became involved with the royalist cause, but her hopes were frequently dashed. This selection ends with the return of Napoleon to Paris from Elba. Despite her considerable hardships, Madame de La Tour du Pin writes with great intelligence, compassion, and wit.

Memoirs: Laughing and Dancing Our Way to the Precipice is among the first of a new list of nonfiction paperbacks published as Harvill Press Editions.