POLIGNAC (Diane), Comtesse - Memoires sur La Vie et le Caractere de Mme La Duchesse de Polignac. Avec des Anecdotes Interessantes sur La Revolution Francoise, et sur La Personne de Marie-Antoinette, Reine de France.

London, Chez J. Derett..., 1796. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 215 x 123 mms., pp. xi [xii blank], 62, introduction in English, text in French, recent marbled boards, with red morocco label on spine. A very good copy Yolande Martine Gabrielle de Polastron, Duchess of Polignac (1749 – 1793) met Marie Antoinette when she was presented at court in 1775 and quickly became her intimate friend. She married Jules François Armand, comte de Polignac in 1767. She was noted for her great beauty, and Simon Schama described her as looking like "some harvested and luscious fruit," as well as "indisputably ravish but dim-witted," and added that her relationship with Marie Antoinette was disastrous. Lady Antonia Fraser recorded that "Her particular freshness of appearance [gave] an impression of "utter naturalness" ... with her cloud of dark hair, her big eyes, her neat nose and pretty pearly teeth, [she] was generally likened to a Madonna by Raphael." In the late 1780s, she fell out of favor with Marie Antoinette and emigrated to England, but she returned to France before the Revolution.

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