| Description |
1 online resource (1 audio file (7hr., 19 min.)) : digital. |
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digital digital recording rda |
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data file rda |
| Access |
Digital content provided by hoopla. |
| Performer |
Narrated by Tara Hugo. |
| Summary |
From the award-winning historian: the remarkable life of "the most beautiful woman of nineteenth-century Baltimore," whose marriage in 1803 to JErome Bonaparte, the youngest brother of Napoleon, became inextricably bound to the diplomatic and political nineteenth-century histories of the United States, France, and England. From the author of Revolutionary Mothers ("Incisive, thoughtful, spiced with vivid anecdotes. Don't miss it."-Thomas Fleming) and Civil War Wives ("Utterly freshSensitive, poignant, thoroughly fascinating."-Jay Winik). In Wondrous Beauty, Carol Berkin tells the story of this audacious, outsize life: how her romantic, passionate marriage infuriated Napoleon and resulted in his banning the then-pregnant Betsy Bonaparte from disembarking in any European port, demanding that his brother either lose all power and remain married to that "American girl"-or renounce her, marry a woman of Napoleon's choice, and reap the benefits. JErome ended the marriage and was made king of Westphalia; Betsy fled to England, and gave birth to her son and only child, JErome's namesake. Berkin writes how this naIve, headstrong American girl returned to Baltimore a cynical, independent woman, refusing to seek social redemption and return to obscurity through a quiet marriage to a member of Baltimore's merchant class; how she disdained America's obsession with money-making, its growing ethos of democracy, and the rigid gender roles that confined women to the parlor and the nursery, and sought a European society where women created salons devoted to intellectual life and where traditions of aristocracy dominated society; and, we see how as a shrewd investor she transformed a modest pension from the French government into a fortune that rivaled many a (male) financier. |
| System Details |
Mode of access: World Wide Web. |
| Subject |
History.
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Bonaparte, Elizabeth Patterson, 1785-1879.
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Jérôme Bonaparte, King of Westphalia, 1784-1860.
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Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821 -- Family.
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Women -- Maryland -- Baltimore -- Biography.
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Baltimore (Md.) -- Biography.
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| Added Author |
Hugo, Tara. Narrator.
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hoopla digital.
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| ISBN |
9781490613086 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
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1490613080 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) |
| Music No. |
MWT13537910 |
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