The Virgin and I
Elisabeth Ladenson: The Mancini sisters, 18 December 2008
Memoirs
by Hortense Mancini and Marie Mancini, edited and translated by Sarah Nelson.
Chicago, 217 pp., £31, August 2008,978 0 226 50279 3 Show More
by Hortense Mancini and Marie Mancini, edited and translated by Sarah Nelson.
Chicago, 217 pp., £31, August 2008,
“... In her 1675 memoir – one of the first autobiographical accounts to be published by a woman during her lifetime under her own name – Hortense Mancini begins by noting that she is writing at the request of her patron, Charles-Emmanuel, duc de Savoie, and that she is doing so despite her ‘natural reluctance’ to talk about herself. She apologises in advance for telling a story that may ‘seem like something out of a novel’, and protests that she is well aware that ‘a woman’s glory lies in not giving rise to gossip ... ”