A Tale in Two Cities

Fanny Burney and Adèle, Comtesse de Boigne, were two of the most remarkable female writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: one a famous novelist, the other an aristocrat from one of France’s most ancient families. This was the tumultuous era which saw the French Revolution, the Napoleonic years and the July 1830 Revolution in France; and in England the ‘madness’ of George III and the extravagant Regency period. Both women used memoirs and diaries to document their lives in the upper echelons of society in London and Paris, commenting with scintillating wit and waspish observation on their encounters with many of the great figures of the day, such as Napoleon, Wellington, Talleyrand, Castlereagh, Chateaubriand, Dr Johnson, David Garrick, Madame de Stael and both the French and British Royal families. Through the observations of these immensely well-connected and brilliant writers, Brian Unwin provides an extraordinarily original insight into the principal events and characters of one of the most seminal and turbulent periods of modern European history.