The Emperor's Lady The Creole Beauty Who Captivated the Most Powerful Man in the World.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1952. Hardcover. 5.75"x8.5"x1.5". 501 pages. BCE. Red cloth boards. Gold box on spine with red letters exposed. Deckled edge. Dedication. Contents. Spine straight, binding tight, pages clean and bright!. No marks. Bumped crown. Edge wear to top and bottom of spine. Faint water spot to top right corner. DJ has small tears and chips to spine and edges. Portrait of Kenyon on back by Bradwell Portraits. Jacket by Robert Doares. Fine / Very Good. Item #10155
Frank Wilson Kenyon (July 6, 1912-February 6, 1989) was a New Zealand novelist.
Frank Wilson Kenyon spent his childhood in Lancashire, England, until his family emigrated to New Zealand when he was twelve years old. There, his father ran a grocery shop and Kenyon started to discover some of the writers who would later influence his own work, including Dickens, Maupassant, Somerset Maugham and H.G. Wells. After leaving school, he worked in a department store before moving to London for two years in his early twenties to develop a writing career. He wrote many historical novels, particularly about famous women in history.
"Apr 22, 2014 carinne rated it liked it
I have a love hate relationship with this book. The first half of the book I enjoyed greatly. I was excited to learn about the life of Empress Josephine, who was married to Napoleon Bonaparte. I didn't know much of the history of her and so jumped into the story completely blind. The story began with her marriage to Alexandre Beahernais who is cruel to her from the beginning. It chronicles her life from the age of 16 until her death in her late 40's. Along the way we get to meet a lot of interesting characters, mostly men, who Josephine uses to her advantage. I could tolerate this for only a while. ( So begins my problem with this book) You see, I assumed as Josephine got older that she would mature. She never did. In fact, the older she became the less She seemed to care about anyone else but herself. This annoyed the crap out of me, even when she married Bonaparte, I assumed she would realize he cared about her and grow to love him. Instead she became more annoying, and treated him like crap. I couldn't understand how someone who'd been treated harshly by her previous husband could treat a man that loved her the same way she'd been treated. I put this book down for a month. ( Maybe that was the problem ) When It came time to finish reading this book,I realized it was becoming a task and I hated Josephine's character. It was like planning to visit someone who you really don't like and having to spend a full day with them. So, Instead of torturing myself I skipped to the end to see if she would redeem herself. She didn't. Still I give this book three stars because even though I somewhat hate it, I enjoyed the first half of the book enough. I wouldn't recommend it to freinds as there are a lot of books you could be reading, and this one is somewhere around five hundred pages in fine print." Goodreads.
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