October-December 2017 - Napoleonic Era

The Napoleonic era begins roughly with Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état, overthrowing the Directory, establishing the French Consulate, and ends during the Hundred Days and his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (9 November 1799 – 28 June 1815).

Wikipedia: List of battles, countries affected, etc : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_era

A Napoleonic timeline: https://content.lib.washington.edu/napoleonweb/timeline.html'

Update the wiki here: http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Reading_Through_Time_Quarterly_Theme_...

I read The Twelfth Physician by Willa Gibbs. This looks like I would have bought it at a flea market or garage sale, but since I don't go to those events, I have no idea where I picked up this book. This book was a little gem in disguise. It is the story of Dr. Charlot Florian and his wife, Diane, during the time of the Directory, which followed the Committee of Public Safety's rule in Revolutionary France. Dr. Florian somehow finds himself on a boat to Sinnamarie, a French penal colony in Guiana; also known as the "guillotine of the soul." Events that unfold really do break both the Dr. and his wife. In the second half of the book Napoleon is featured.

I'm giving this book only 4 stars because I was confused by one of the sentences in the last paragraph of the book: "Charlot and Diane were strolling in the Garden in Gehenna...." They weren't in Gehenna, but in Alexandria, Egypt. Therefore is the reader to conclude that: 1) their existence was hellish (as Gehenna is the Hebrew word for hell) or 2) they died and went to hell? or 3) something else?

The print on this book was so small that I could read it only in small doses even with bifocals. It is smaller than a font size 9.

Fiction based on the French Revolution is at the top of my list of reading materials.

I will look for other books by this same author. 278 pages 4 stars

I haven't a whole lot of "Napoleonic literature" lying around. Carlyle's The French Revolution doesn't really qualify because it ends before Bonaparte's coup, and I've already read Gaskell's Sylvia's Lovers and Hardy's The Dynasts. Maybe, though, I could use this as the incentive to getting myself down at last to War and Peace.

But does this have to be something specifically related to the Napoleonic wars? Or is it enough that it significantly include the time-period? Because if so, then much of Wordsworth's work qualifies, and even The Prelude overlaps this period (but also later). That also gives me an incentive to get around to Juliet Barker's Wordsworth: A Life (just about the only Barker work I've never read).

So, a thorough Wordsworth reading? Or must I consign myself to War and Peace?

I'd think as long as it was in the time period it would be fine

>3 CurrerBell: It is of the time period, but it is about the impact that France's invasion had on Czarist Russia seen through the eyes of three main characters and an entire cast of less than main characters. It is more about the crumbling of Russian society than anything to do with Napoleon.

I, for one, did not think W&P that bad, I rather enjoyed it. It did bog down during the discussion of various military maneuvers, but all in all I'm glad I read it.

I picked up a very old book from my shelves from this: Onnen Visser, der Schmugglersohn von Norderney is an adventure story about a young man whose father gets summarily executed for violating Napoleon's continental blockade, is pressed into the French army, marches to Moscow with them, deserts and then returns home after many adventures, including the siege of Hamburg. Very much anti-French, of course, written in 1885, but mostly true to the facts, especially how the French occupation plundered and starved the occupied regions. She gets carried away with her description of the undisciplined, plundering French in Russia, I can't imagine they would have reached Moscow if they had been in such a bad state from the word go. But for this I've got another book on deck, a non-fiction telling of the campaign Der Brand von Moskau.

Margaret Kennedy, Troy Chimneys, an historical novel which is more generally "Regency" but which includes significant references to the Napoleonic Wars. Also qualified for the Virago group's October "Margaret Kennedy read."

Wiki Update

Some of the wikis in use here at LT have been messed about by spammers so they are trying to fix the wiki's so that this can't happen. So for now we can't use them but once the problem has been solved, the editing buttons will be back and we can catch up with our posting.

And I have finished Vor dem Sturm, all 924 pages of it. It's a critical edition with notes and even different versions duly logged. It was Fontane's first novel, last opened in 1988, and now that I am older I appreciate his leisurely pace much more.
It is the winter of 1812, Napoleon is back in Paris, but the remnants of his army trudge across Prussia, and everywhere people are eager for the king to break the imposed alliance and to allow them to chase the invaders out, who include quite a few Germans impressed into the French army. The tone and the style are very much like those of his travel books, full of anecdotes and conversation.

Throne of Jade is set in the Napoleonic Wars, and although the dragons are invented, everything else is just as I know it from some of my favourite authors.

I finished Maria Pavlovna : Die frühen Tagebücher der Erbherzogin von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach where she spends most of the time covered in these diaries on the road, fleeing Weimar for safety from Napoleon. A fascinating read, full of people whose names are familiar from other books. Now I'm reading a book on the Russian campaign by a French historian, Der Brand von Moskau, to see how things looked on the other side.

When I looked for books set in the Napoleonic time period, one of the lists I found came up with Shades of Milk and Honey which I already had. It was an enjoyable read involving romance, misunderstandings and a heroine who wants to do the right thing but, given her sheltered upbringing, she is having difficulty sorting through the lies and secrets of the people around her. This tale is also touched by fantasy as the heroine and one of the male leads both have the ability to infuse art and artistry with touches of glamour to delight their audiences.

I picked up another non-fiction book for this, Der Brand von Moskau by a French historian. I'm not quite happy with the quality of the translation, but the book is not outstanding enough to justify tracking down a French copy.

the January- March Quarterly thread is up: http://www.librarything.com/topic/277571

Wordsworth's Poetry and Prose in the Norton Critical Edition. Although he lived to mid-century, most of Wordsworth's major work was completed through the French Revolution and Waterloo.