Research Catalog

Title

Morganatic.

Author

Nordau, Max Simon, 1849-1923

Publication

Lippincott, 1905

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Lee, Elizabeth, 1898-

Description

396 p.

Summary

"The scene is laid in the literary and journalistic circles of Paris...and in the courts of foreign principalities. Particularly excellent are the satirical sketches of the Baroness von Gronendal, morganatic wife of the Prince of Meissen-Lowenstein-Franka, at bottom sensible and good-hearted, but driven into meanness and absurdity by her snobbish wish to assert her very dubious rights, and of her son Siegfried, who, in spite of his fundamental weakness, shows some elements of character, and hovers perpetually on the borderland of good sense and folly. The sketch of General Boulanger as General Ménard is interesting, but by far the best piece of work in the book is the character of the heroine, Nicoline Flanmert, the natural daughter of a German prince. She is beautiful, high-spirited, ambitious and self-confident, and her unaffected freedom of thought and action cannot fail to make a conquest of the reader, especially in the instance in which she coerces her father into marrying her mother. On theo ther hand, Mr. Gray, the American millionaire who marries Nicoline, is too much of a deus ex machina to be in the least convincing. The translation is excellent, but the story would be improved by being considerably shortened." (The Academy and Literature, Nov 12, 1904)

Subject

• 1900-1999
• German fiction
• Paris (France) > Fiction

Genre/Form

• Translations
• Fiction

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

OCLC

• 1524791
• SCSB-13075753

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library