Lettres choisies (edition 1988)

Had to read for class...painfully boring. I am sure many historians have been able to garner information from her letters but this collection is like trying to read a 300 year old soap opera. A disappointment for me. ( )

I was disappointed in this book. I expected letters with more sparkle and more memorable events. While there were some interesting things related: a suicide, two poisoners and the fall of a minister among other happenings; for the most part the letters were uninteresting gossip about obscure people who did nothing in particular.

I can't, in all honesty, recommend the book. Read Chesterfield instead. ( )

http://www.lonelymountain.net/books/sep08.html#sevignesl ( )

Oh - thank God for Madame de Sevigne! Her letters are sublime! Her voluminous correspondence provides exquisit insight to life in the court of Louis XIV, complete with hilarious asides and fastidious detail. To view history from her perspective is incredibly entertaining. The only flaw here - Tancock's collection of Sevigne's letters is incomplete, and we are at his mercy regarding content. He admits that selecting which of Madame's 1400+ extant letters would appear in his book was extremely difficult, however I would have prefered to have been able to make those editing decisions myself. I will next be looking for a complete collection of Madame's letters to sift through. ( )