Life of Catherine the Great : Love, Sex and Power

"Dutiful daughter, frustrated wife, passionate lover, domineering mother, doting grandmother, devoted friend, tireless legislator, generous patron of artists and philosophers - the Empress Catherine II, the Great, was all these things and more. Her reign, the longest in Russian imperial history, lasted from 1762 until her death in 1796; during those years she built on the work begun by her most famous predecessor, Peter the Great, to establish Russia as a major European power and to transform its new capital, St. Petersburg, into a city to rival Paris and London in the beauty of its architecture, the glittering splendor of its court, and the magnificence of its art collections. Yet the great Catherine was not even Russian by birth and had no legitimate claim to the Russian throne; she seized it and held on to it, through wars, rebellions, and plagues, by the force of her personality, by her charm and determination, and by an unshakable belief in her own destiny." "Using many of Catherine's own words from her correspondence and other documents, as well as contemporary accounts by courtiers, ambassadors, and foreign visitors, Virginia Rounding penetrates the character of this most powerful, fascinating, and surprisingly sympathetic of eighteenth-century women."--BOOK JACKET.Rounding, Virginia is the author of 'Life of Catherine the Great : Love, Sex and Power' with ISBN 9780312328887 and ISBN 0312328885.