Scott on Zelide

Portrait of ZeLide by Geoffrey Scott

By: Richard Holmes O.B.E.

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Paperback | 17 May 2004

At a Glance

Paperback
220 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
19.1 x 13.5 x 1.5

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'Lives that Never Grow Old' is a wonderful series- edited by Richard Holmes - that recovers the great classical tradition of English biography. Every book is a biographical masterpiece, still thrilling to read and vividly alive.

Zelide lived in her father's moated castle in Holland, like a fairytale princess in a tower. She was the clever, sexy, mercurial young Dutch blue-stocking with whom Boswell fell disastrously in love in 1764. The rest of Zelide's story was unknown until the brilliant young Boswell scholar Geoffrey Scott pieced it together from her intimate letters and essays.

Subsequent affairs with a cynical cavalry officer, a celebrated but vacillating writer (aptly named Benjamin Constant), and a thoroughly reliable music master, took her eventually to another fairytale mansion in Switzerland. This tender, funny, faintly salacious portrait of a 'belle-esprit' is one of the most exquisite biographical miniatures ever written.

Industry Reviews

Like the best fairytale heroines, Zelide lived in an enchanting castle where she had all the most eligible young men swooning over her. She could be mercurial and aloof, charming and wicked. Yet this was no fairytale, for Zelide really lived in the 18th century and was as feted in her way as Eva Peron would become 200 years later. Zelide lived like a princess in her father's moated castle, dazzling the family and would-be suitors who came to her door. Little of the legend remained until in the 1920s biographer Geoffrey Scott began to piece Zelide's life together through old anecdotes, the most intimate letters and contemporary essays. The result is a biographical miniature that is at times difficult to read but delves wonderfully into the romantic 18th-century life that took our heroine from Holland to Switzerland. The book has a long and analytical introduction from Richard Holmes who is editing this 'Classic Biographies' series. (Kirkus UK)

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