Madame De Pompadour ─ A Life

In this biography, French historian Evelyne Lever chronicles the extraordinary life of the most famous and influential mistress of Louis XV: Jeanne-Antoinette de Pompadour. This seductive, astute and resilient woman was destined to be both adored and reviled by the Court and the French public because of her relationship with one of the most powerful men in Europe, yet she was also to wield enormous influence on the culture, politics and military future of France, with an authority that far exceeded any previously exerted by an official mistress.
The incredible story of how a bourgeois girl of questionable parentage would rise to the highest ranks of French society, consolidate her position at Court and maintain a twenty-year relationship with Louis XV begins with a fortune-teller's prophecy that one day the young Jeanne-Antoinette would be the mistress of a King. In spite of the difficulties presented by her background, by the age of twenty-four the beautiful Jeanne-Antoinette had indeed become the favorite of the monarch. The implications - both personal and political - of their relationship were far-reaching, and Lever skillfully illustrates how Madame de Pompadour gradually played the role not only of official mistress but also of France's second queen.