From the Publisher
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.
This is the story of Catherine the woman, whom power alone could never satisfy, for she also wanted love, affection, friendship and humor. She found these in letter-writing, in grandchildren, in gardens, architecture and greyhounds - as well as in a succession of lovers which gave rise to salacious rumors throughout Europe. The real Catherine, however, was more interesting than any rumor.
Using many of Catherine’s own words from her voluminous 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.
The Washington Post -
Amanda Vaill
At the outset, Rounding proclaims herself uninterested in writing "a definitive once-and-for-all biography, containing everything that is known about Catherine."…Instead, Rounding focuses on the pageant of Russian court ceremonies (of which, fascinating as they are, we hear too much) and on Catherine's personal and romantic life: her love for her grandchildren and her greyhounds, her testy relationship with her autocratic son, her sharp eye for a good painting, her dry wit, her appetite for ideas. Rounding makes copious use of the documentary evidence that Catherine and her courtiers left behind. The quantity of letters and memoirs she quotes from makes one wish that Rounding had dared to speak up more herself because she is a perceptive analyst of character, and a stylish one. She paints a vivid portrait of a sensual and intellectual woman. Catherine had both a desperate need to love and be loved and an awareness of how capricious that need was. "One cannot hold one's heart in one's hand," she wrote in her memoirs, "forcing it or releasing it, tightening or relaxing one's grasp at will." One wishes that some contemporary rulers, their romantic foibles revealed for the world to see, had been so candid or so self-aware.
Publishers Weekly
This lengthy biography of Russia's greatest female ruler is by no means as salacious as the subtitle suggests, but this sympathetic portrayal certainly focuses on Catherine's private life. British scholar Rounding (Les Grandes Horizontales) relies on memoirs, private letters and previous monographs as she details how, after dissolution of the unhappy marriage that brought Catherine (1729-1798) to Russia from Germany, the empress juggled her relationships with men as she attempted to thrust Russia into the modern era and make it a European power. Indeed, Rounding offers an intriguing (and partially convincing) thesis that Catherine was most effective as a ruler when she was satisfied in her private life. That life was never dull: Catherine's final lover was 40 years her junior, helping to give rise to wild but untrue rumors about her sexual appetite. Rounding's prose matches the excitement of its subject, with vivid portrayals of the late 18th-century Russian court and the machinations of Catherine and those around her. Readers looking for more scholarly and analytical treatments of Catherine's policies and Russia during this time might want to look at biographies by Isabel de Madariaga and John T. Alexander, but Rounding's work will appeal to Catherine-philes and those interested in women's history. 16 pages of color photos. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Foreign Affairs
Scarcely more has been written about any Russian ruler, unless it be Peter, than Catherine, but rarely is it done in a way that captures so well her personality and life-shaping experiences. This is not a study of Russia looking in the window at Catherine; it is being in the room with her and looking out to catch glimpses of Russia. Her stifled youth (having been brought to Russia for marriage at age 15), her precocious ambitions as the teenage bride of the tsar-to-be, her early dalliances, the plotting that brought her to power, the intimate male alliances she struck throughout a 34-year reign, the differentiated affections for son and grandsons, and, above all, her private thoughts about people, power, and her purpose -- all are carefully reconstructed from remarkably revealing memoirs and the dispatches of discerning foreign ambassadors. The book is so readable because it brings Catherine alive, and not least in her relations with the men she drew to her side -- relations far more historically significant than the tawdry subtitle of the book implies.
David Keymer Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
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Library Journal
Born Sophie Frederica Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, Catherine II (1729–96) was arguably the ablest monarch in Russian history. Her reign began with a coup: she deposed her husband, Peter III, and let him be murdered. Rounding (Grandes Horizontales) explores both the private and the public figure, culling with expertise from archival sources. By nature, Catherine was humane, with a personality that blended candor and guile. Unlike her predecessors or successors, she encouraged her ministers to express themselves without fear of retribution, even when they disagreed with her. Her energy and intelligence paid off. Reflecting on her reign, she listed "29 [new] government districts…, 144…towns, 30 conventions and treaties, 78 military victories, 88 'memorable edicts concerning laws or foundations,' … 123 'edicts for the relief of the people,' … 492 achievements in all…." She purchased numerous artworks for the Hermitage, corresponded regularly with Voltaire and Diderot, and served as patron to artisans, architects, and educators. Until the excesses of the French Revolution soured her, she enthusiastically supported the Enlightenment. This is an attractive account of the reign of a most remarkable woman; Rounding's use of the voluminous and lively court correspondence is a plus. Strongly recommended.
Kirkus Reviews
Lively biography of a much misunderstood, most gifted ruler of Russia. "That this most civilized of women should be known by most people only in relation to the infamous and entirely untrue ‘horse story' is one of the greatest injustices of history," grumbles London-based translator and writer Rounding. In fairness to that misperception, Sophia Frederica Auguste of Anhalt-Zerbst, having climbed to the top of the "feudal anthill," was renowned for affairs with the courtiers and retainers who surrounded her; what with all the amorous hustle and bustle, it's easy to see how a steed could steal into the narrative. Catherine, Rounding makes clear, understood that sex was an element of power. She had come to a St. Petersburg that was still mostly a metropolis of log cabins to be married off to young Peter III, who, it emerged, was a bit of a dimwit and rather easily controlled. "Instead of being able to be a wise consort to his young wife-to-be," Rounding writes, "Peter found it was the other way round, and he did not, on the whole, welcome this." Catherine was, after all, well-read, fluent in several languages and given to philosophy and literature, though in later life her philosophy was of a practical and even Machiavellian nature; writing that children cried either to complain or out of stubbornness, for instance, she urged that "neither sort of tears should be allowed, all crying should be forbidden." Moscow does not believe in tears, indeed, but Catherine had shed many as Peter kept his distance from her, pushing her into the willing arms of a succession of dashing cavaliers and counselors who helped her build St. Petersburg into a mighty city and Russia into a mighty empire; in thisregard, Rounding ranks the empress as equal to or greater than her predecessor Peter the Great, who was certainly more murderous than she. A welcome study of a "multifaceted, very eighteenth-century woman."
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