The phrase “Let them eat cake” predates Marie Antoinette’s birth by many decades. Historian Antonia Fraser who wrote the most recent biography of Marie Antoinette has posited that the sentence was uttered by Louis XIV’s Spanish-born wife, Maria Theresa, a rather cloistered queen who never learned to speak French terribly well and spent much of her time shut indoors playing cards with her attendants and her dwarves while the Sun King flitted about with the likes of Mesdames de Montespan and Maintenon. And Queen Maria Theresa never mentioned “cake” either,” if she said anything at all. The eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gives us the phrase in his writings, can’t recall where he first heard it, but he remembers it as “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche.” Let them eat brioche.

Still Life of Brioche by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, c. 1763

Sit back with a steaming café au lait . . . and enjoy it!

This is the Basic Brioche recipe taken from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum), which merits 4 forks on Epicurious.com.

According to Ms. Beranbaum, “for those who desire even more butter, it can be increased to 6 ounces, which will also make the crumb finer, denser, and more cake-like. [In which case, well, yeah, let them eat cake!] This is actually a very easy dough to make, especially in a bread machine, which handles this small amount of dough perfectly.”

TIME SCHEDULE
Dough Starter (Sponge): minimum 1 1/2 hours, maximum 24 hours
Minimum Rising Time: 10 hours
Oven Temperature: 425°F (350°F for the loaf)
Baking Time: 10 to 15 minutes for small brioche, 35 to 40 minutes for the loaf
Yield: Makes 16 small brioche (or one 8 1/2-by-4 1/2-by-4 1/2-inch-high loaf)/17.5 ounces/500 grams

INGREDIENTS
Dough Starter (Sponge):
2 tblsp water, at room temperature (70° to 90°F):
1 tblsp sugar
¼ tsp instant yeast
½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour (use only Gold Medal, King Arthur, or Pillsbury)
1 large egg

Flour mixture:
1 cup plus 1 ½ tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour (use only Gold Medal, King Arthur, or Pillsbury)
2 tblsp sugar
1 ¼ tsp instant yeast
½ tsp salt
2 large eggs, cold
8 tablespoons (½ cup) very soft unsalted butter

Egg Glaze (if making a large loaf, glaze is optional):
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp cream or milk

PREPARATION
1. One day or up to 2 days ahead, make the dough. In the mixer bowl, place the water, sugar, instant yeast, flour, and egg. Whisk by hand until very smooth, to incorporate air, about 3 minutes. The sponge will be the consistency of a very thick batter. (At first the dough may collect inside the whisk, but just shake it out and keep whisking. If it’s too thick to whisk, it means you’ve added too much flour and will need to add a little of the eggs to be added Step 3.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl and set it aside, covered with plastic wrap.

2. Combine the ingredients for the flour mixture and add to the sponge. In a small bowl, whisk the flour with the sugar and yeast. Then whisk in the salt (this keeps the yeast from coming in contact with the salt, which would kill it). Sprinkle this mixture on top of the sponge. Cover it tightly with plastic wrap and let it stand for 1 1/2 to 2 hours at room temperature. (During this time, the sponge will bubble through the flour mixture in places; this is fine.)

3. Mix the dough. Add the 2 cold eggs and mix with the dough hook on low (#2 if using a KitchenAid) for about 1 minute or until the flour is moistened. Raise the speed to medium (#4 KitchenAid) and beat for 2 minutes. Scrape the sides of the bowl with an oiled spatula and continue beating for about 5 minutes longer or until the dough is smooth and shiny but very soft and sticky. It will mass around the dough hook but not pull away from the bowl completely.

Add the butter by the tablespoon, waiting until each addition is almost completely absorbed before adding the next tablespoon, beating until all the butter is incorporated. The dough will be very soft and elastic and will stick to your fingers unmercifully, but don’t be tempted to add more flour at this point; it will firm considerably after chilling. (The dough will weigh about 19 oz.)

4. Let the dough rise. Using an oiled spatula or dough scraper, scrape the dough into a 1-quart dough rising container or bowl, greased lightly with cooking spray or oil. Lightly spray or oil the top of the dough and cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap. With a piece of tape, mark the side of the container at approximately where double the height of the dough would be. Allow the dough to rise until doubled, 1 ½ to 2 hours.

5. Chill the dough. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour to firm it; this will prevent the butter from separating.

Gently deflate the dough by stirring it with a rubber scraper or spatula, and return it to the refrigerator for another hour so that it will be less sticky and easier to handle.

6. Deflate the dough and allow it to rest, chilled. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface and press or roll it into a rectangle, flouring the surface and dough as needed to keep it from sticking. The exact size of the rectangle is not important. Give the dough a business letter turn, brushing off any excess flour, and again press down or roll it out into a rectangle. Rotate it 90 degrees so that the closed side is facing to your left. Give it a second business letter turn and round the corners. Dust it lightly on all sides with flour. Wrap it loosely but securely in plastic wrap and then place it in a large zip-seal bag. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours or up to 2 days to allow the dough to ripen (develop flavor) and firm.

7. Shape the dough and let it rise. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and gently press it down to deflate it. Cut the dough into 16 pieces (a scant 1 ¼ oz. each). Without a scale, the easiest way to divide the dough evenly is to lightly flour your hands and roll it into a long cylinder. Cut it in half, then continue cutting each piece in half until there are 16 pieces.

Pinch off a little less than one-quarter of each piece, for the topknot. Roll each larger piece of dough into a ball and press it into a prepared brioche mold.* With lightly floured hands, shape each of the dough pieces reserved for the topknots into an elongated pear form. Using your index finger, make a hole in the center of each brioche, going almost to the bottom of the mold, and insert the elongated part of a topknot deeply into the hole. Cover the molds loosely with oiled plastic wrap and let rise (ideally at 75° to 80°F) until the edges of the dough reach the tops of the molds, about 1 hour.

8. Preheat the oven. Preheat the oven to 425°F 1 hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lower level and place a baking stone or baking sheet on it before preheating.

9. Glaze and bake the brioche. Lightly beat together the egg yolk and cream for the glaze. Brush the top of the brioche with the egg glaze, being careful not to drip any on the side of the pans, or it will impede rising. Allow it to dry for 5 minutes and then brush a second time with the glaze. Use greased scissors or a small sharp knife to make a 1/4-inch-deep cut all around the base of the topknot so it will rise to an attractive shape.
Set the molds on a baking sheet and place them on the hot stone or hot baking sheet. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until a skewer inserted under a topknot comes out clean (an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center will read about 190°F).

10. Cool the brioche. Remove the brioche from the oven and unmold them onto a wire rack. Turn top side up and allow them to cool until barely warm.

Note The small brioche can be reheated in a 350°F oven for 5 minutes.

ULTIMATE FULL FLAVOR VARIATION
For the best flavor development in Step 2, allow the sponge to ferment for 1 hour at room temperature, then refrigerate it for up to 24 hours.

POINTERS FOR SUCCESS
• In a superb article on brioche in Pleasures of Cooking, the cookbook author Paula Wolfert recommends melting and browning about one-fifth of the butter (2 tablespoons) for an extra rich, delicious flavor.
• On some mixers there may not be an adjustment to raise the bowl, and the dough hook may not work as well for this small amount of dough; if this is the case, use the paddle beater.
• If after unmolding a brioche loaf the sides are still pale in color, place the loaf directly on the oven rack and continue baking for about 5 minutes to brown the sides and make them firm to prevent collapse.
• If a deeper shine is desired, the brioche can be double-glazed by brushing with the glaze immediately after shaping and then a second time just before baking. This also serves to prevent the dough from drying out during rising.

This dough is exceptionally wet. Just enough extra flour is added to be able to handle it for shaping, resulting in a very light, soft bread. I do not use the food processor for this dough because it is so sticky that it is very difficult to remove from the bowl and blade; it also lifts up the blade when incorporating the butter.

Brioche molds: I looked online and they are sold through Amazon, at Williams-Sonoma, the FoodNetworkStore.com and several other sources. A search for “brioche molds” yields a host of purchase sources.

Source: Distilled from the Epicurious.com website which reprinted it from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. Copyright (c) 2003 by Rose Levy Beranbaum. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/printerfriendly/Basic-Brioche-351237#ixzz1TarfBM21

A few years ago I read and loved Koen’s Through A Glass Darkly, which covers the South Sea Bubble financial crisis (fascinating – especially with our more currently recent economic melt down…history really is cyclical!) as well as its pre-quel, Dark Angels, which takes place in Charles II’s restoration court and spans one of my favorite eras. I have yet to read the continuation of Barbara ‘s story in Now Face to Face, which is placed high up on my TBR list. I find I typically tend to prefer historical fiction that stars real life historical figures (even if the supporting cast mates are “real”); however the Saylors and Alderlys of Koens first three novels made for some of the best fictitious characters in hist-fic I’ve come across. In Before Versailles, however, Koen turns her pen to total historical accuracy when it comes to real vs. imagines characters, which she serves with equal justice to the genre as her previous works.

Louis XIV, known as “The Sun King”, was one of the greatest (perhaps arguably the greatest), patrons of culture and the arts to ever sit on the French throne. It was under his reign that Molière, Lully, and Mansart…Charles Le Brun, Rigaud and Jean de La Fontaine (the list goes on) flourished. It is interesting that Koen chose to focus on a very specific, small fraction of only one year of his life, considering he was one of the longest reigning European monarchs of all time. Because his life was so vast and multi-faceted, this decision kept the story focused and the direction of the book on a clear path, though it might have been nice to have had a glimpse at an older, wiser Sun King. I like to experience characters through the different stages of their lives as they learn and grow and come into their own, and this book didn’t really allow for much of that.

I will say though, Karleen Koen writes with a certain verve and spark that makes her novels immensely enjoyable. Her period detail is always on point and Before Versailles is no exception. I enjoyed her portrayal of Louise de la Valliere, whose green, wide-eyed naivety usually tends to bore me. I first became familiar with Louise’s character in Sandra Gulland’s Mistress of the Sun, and I think enjoyed Koen’s portrayal a bit more…perhaps because I had a major eye-roll moment when I learned towards the end of Gulland’s story what guilt ridden self-loathing caused La Valliere to put herself through after her affair with the king cooled down. Not the case in Before Versailles, as this book focuses on a very specific time frame in Louis’s reign..and as such, a spritely, enthusiastic, and refreshing Louise de la Valliere.

Even more of a departure from her typical portrayals was Princess Henriette of England, the Duchesse d’Orléans. Usually the victim of a terrible marriage to a husband who loathed her, this Henriette (or, “Minette”, as she was known by her brother Charles II and cousin King Louis XIV) was a bit more frivolous. Flirty, fun, and the object of the king’s desire, I found her character enjoyable though difficult to sympathize with (and she is usually so tragic!). An interesting twist in this book was the literary inclusion of Dumas’s works. We see glimpses of The Man in the Iron Mask, D’Artagnon, The Three Musketeers, and of course, Louise de la Valliere. While not my favorite portrayal of this era, Before Versailles is worth the read, especially for those new to the life of the Sun King. I think I had too much previous reading in the back of my mind to compare this to, though there were moments when I was able to shut it all out and enjoy the magnificent descriptions of a glorious time in history.

Purchase this book on Amazon | Purchase this book from an Indie Bookseller

I read in your “The Story Behind the Book” piece on your website that you decided to write 31 Bond Street after coming across a newspaper page in a print shop–fascinating! This led you to a paper trail of 17 different newspapers that were covering the murder at the time. Were these newspaper articles your primary research sources?

The newspapers were my primary resource, and once I got past the difficulty of reading the 19th century prose, they were a wonderful immersion into that world. They contained reportage on the murder case, dialogue transcripts of the trial, plus politics, advertising, and the amusements of New Yorkers of the day. I created files on various subjects like fashion and entertainment to give the book flavor. I also backed up with lots of reading – there are some great histories on New York City’s role during the Civil War.

Emma Cunningham

How did you come up with the fictional aspects of 31 Bond Street and blend them with the facts you knew to be true?

I realized that I wanted to have characters that had motives and desires and to understand what made them tick, and that is the stuff of fiction. I had to put myself in the character’s shoes and try to figure out how each of them would feel, embroiled in this dramatic case. So it’s a bit like method acting. For instance, the fact that Emma Cunningham was a widowed mother with two teenaged daughters made me realize how important it was for her to find husbands for herself and her daughter’s, given that women did not have means to security except through marriage or family. So, once her primary motive become clear, many of her actions become clearer in context.

I read in The Washington Post that you had initially intended this to be a nonfiction study. What made you decide instead to write it as a historical fiction murder mystery?

The Bond Street murder was extensively reported in the newspapers of the time, and I found myself getting caught up its many twists and turns when trying to ‘tell’ the facts of the case in a nonfiction study. I became more intrigued by fiction’s ability to ‘show,’ not tell. The personal dynamics between the characters came naturally from the facts: Emma Cunningham had a strong conflicts with her lover turned nemesis, Harvey Burdell, and then the defense lawyer, Henry Clinton, was in opposition to the ambitious prosecuting District Attorney, Oakey Hall. So, these character’s conflicts created a natural plot dynamic and lots of dramatic tension.

Dr. Harvey Burdell

New York City is as much a character in your book as Emma, Henry, and Dr. Burdell. A New Yorker myself, I greatly enjoyed your historical descriptions of pre-Civil War Manhattan. Tell us a bit about this dynamic; the economic, social, and political differences of New York then vs. now.

The setting, New York City, 1857, still had undeveloped areas of virgin landscape and that fascinated me. I love the idea of turning a corner, and stumbling into the past. As a New Yorker, we often overlook the natural beauty of the city’s location with its splendid harbor and waterways. So, yes, the setting, both geographically and politically, became a character of the book. Politically, I discovered that there was pro-Southern sentiment in pre-Civil War New York, something that is being uncovered in recent historical examinations. And I looked at the positions of women, children, ex-slaves, and servants in New York of that time, all of whom did not have voices in the history books, and wondered about the dangers and perils that were part of their everyday lives.

I’ve heard rumors of a 31 Bond Street movie – what more, if anything, can you tell us?

I hear that the book is circulating as a possible movie, but the ways of Hollywood are pretty mysterious, and I suppose I can only wait to see what evolves. Having already ‘created’ the characters from real people, it would intrigue me to see them re-created again by actors and sets, but that would someone else’s job – not mine.

31 Bond Street received excellent reviews and was very well received – do you have plans for a second novel? If so, what is the time period/subject matter?

I am fortunate to have the chance to write another novel. There is a natural sequel with Henry Clinton and his wife involved in a political trial later in the century. But I am taking a breather from those characters, and working on an idea that takes place in the present day, a mystery on an archeological dig. I hesitate to go into detail too early, as I still need to present this to my editor, but I do hope to have a third book afterward, and that Henry and Elisabeth Clinton will return.

About the Author
ELLEN HORAN was raised in Philadelphia and New York. After graduating from college, where she studied painting and history, she lived in France for a year while working as an au pair and studying studio art. She remained abroad for a second year and was offered a grant to live and paint in the South of France. She returned to New York City and worked for many years with photographers and photo agencies. She maintained an art studio and worked as a freelance photo editor for magazines and books. She turned her attention to writing after becoming intrigued by the Bond Street murder case. She lives in downtown Manhattan, the setting of her first novel, 31 Bond Street.

Architect Julia Morgan

Ask most people “Who is Julia Morgan?”—and if the person has even heard of California’s first licensed woman architect, they will probably reply, “Didn’t she have something to do with San Simeon?” In recent years, the late Morgan has finally come into her own regarding the wedding cake confection (now a California State Park) she designed and built for newspaper baron, William Randolph Hearst, on the coast in Central California over two decades: 1919 to 1939.

Far less known are the details of Morgan’s role in the extraordinary recovery of San Francisco in the wake of the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire. Uncovering this story became an obsession of mine when my husband and I moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 1998 and rented a flat on Nob Hill, a few blocks for the fabled Fairmont Hotel.

Fairmont & devastated environs

I soon learned from our building manager that Julia Morgan had not only restored the Fairmont, built some 600 structures around the San Francisco Bay Area, but had also designed and constructed the apartments in our small, elegant complex.

IMAGE: Fairmont interior destruction

Intrigued, I came across some insurance company photographs showing the absolute devastation of the very spot where we were living! The cataclysm, in similar fashion to the recent temblors in Haiti and Japan, had obliterated some 480 city blocks and left 250,000 of 400,000 San Franciscans living in tents and shacks in the parks for up to two-and-a-half years.

The Fairmont, built on the bedrock of Nob Hill, survived the quake in good shape, but was deeply scarred by the fired that roared through this most posh of San Francisco neighborhoods.

Perhaps the Fairmont’s restoration saga and Julia Morgan’s role in it is a little-known tale, partly due to the fact the hotel was designed by someone else—two people, in fact—brothers James and Merritt Reid, though James seemed to have been the principal architect, & Merritt the business head of the original team.

The beautiful, beaux-arts jewel of Nob Hill, a 600-room edifice, had been a couple of days shy of its grand opening when the 1906 earthquake struck. Furniture, it’s said, was still in packing crates when the firestorm roared through.

William Randolph Hearst and Julia Morgan

In the aftermath, Julia Morgan, seen here in later years with Hearst on the Hearst Castle grounds, was considered “merely” the architect who came in and put the Fairmont back the way it was before the horrendous events that took place 105 years ago April 18 at 5:11, 5:12– or 5:13 a.m.– (depending on your historic source).

Another reason that most Americans aren’t aware of Morgan’s astonishing achievement regarding the Fairmont is anchored deeply in Morgan’s own personality.

Julia (far left) with her sorority sisters in 1894

By all accounts, she possessed an almost morbid aversion to being photographed or written about. In this photo of her with her Kappa Alpha Theta sorority sisters at UC Berkeley in the early 1890s, she is on the far left. In fact, she’s practically standing out of the picture…nearly behind the palm!

Morgan siblings in 1870s

Born January 20, 1872 in San Francisco to upper class parents who also encouraged her sister Emma to become a lawyer, the family eventually moved to the East Bay where Julia graduated from Oakland High in 1890– and was only woman in her class to enter the engineering department at UC Berkeley.

Her father, Charles Morgan, a mining engineer, had unsuccessfully sought his fortune in post-Goldrush San Francisco.

Fortunately, her mother’s family, the Parmelees, had made millions buying and selling cotton before the civil war and provided for the family comfortably.

Extremely reticent with people outside her family, Julia Morgan did everything she could to avoid the spotlight. When she applied to the architecture school, L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, she signed her name “J. Morgan.” Speculation is, she was accepted because the school thought she was a son of American financier, J.P. Morgan! When she arrived in France, it took nearly three years before she could pass additional entrance exams in French and do required calculations in metrics instead of pounds and inches.

The first woman in the world to gain her credentials in architecture at the all-male L’Ecole, she vied with her fellow students in the design studios where she and other fledgling architects completed their assignments. She returned to San Francisco, soon opened her own firm, and easily passed the state licensing exam.

She was only thirty-four when the quake struck in 1906, and suddenly, she had more business than she knew what to do with, including the commission to restore the Fairmont in ten months’ time, proving to the world that San Francisco would, indeed, rise from the ashes.

How she and the others partaking in the ferocious competition to get the city’s hotels rebuilt before the first anniversary of the quake in 1907 formed the core of the story of A Race to Splendor, published in April by Sourcebooks Landmark.

Julia Morgan once said rather tartly that she was not one of those (in her words) “talking architects” touting their grand accomplishments to the press.

Her view was that her buildings should speak for themselves. To underscore this notion, she sent many of her original drawings to the owners of the houses she’d built and then ordered whatever papers were left to be burned when she closed her office in 1951.

Ciji in front of The Fairmont today

I had an amazing adventure researching and writing this tale of fierce rivalry, emotional recovery, and the amazing rebuilding of a devastated city and owe a great debt of gratitude to the historians and Morgan biographers who supplied much of what I learned about Julia Morgan’s role in getting the Fairmont back on its feet, 105 years ago this month.

I tell the story through the lens of a fictional composite character, Amelia Hunter Bradshaw, based on people who worked with and for Morgan during this pioneering woman’s rebuilding of an enduring landmark.

Please enjoy the novel and visit www.cijiware.com to learn more on this and the other five historicals I’ve written.

In the past two months I have:
1. Moved across the country from New York to Los Angeles.
2. Started a new job in a new industry.
3. Bought a car (in NYC you don’t need a car!)
4. Left everything that was familiar to me behind in favor of a completely new life.

That said, I’m loving this new life I’m living…but it has definitely kept me away from blogging, and I miss it! Now that that move is really official, I’ve found very little time for reading much of anything other than entertainment and lifestyle mags at the nail salon, as keeping abreast of what’s going on in the entertainment industry is an essential part of my new job. As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t posted many reviews of late. I have managed to squeeze in some HF reading and will post reviews in the coming weeks, but in general I am being much more choosy as to which books I have sent to me to review. This may change as time goes on and I get myself into more of a reading routine, but I just want to make readers aware that while I am definitely BACK as of this week, this blog is going to become less review-centric (though I’ve never been ALL about book reviews–more of a mix of art, culture, history, and literature, which will continue).

This week I will be back on the blog posting some guest posts, author interviews, and a list of hot historical fiction summer beach reads. And on Friday, I’ll be driving down to San Diego for the Historical Novel Society Conference along with Heater from The Maiden’s Court! I will be tweeting throughout the event, so you can follow me @AllieGreenwald if you’re interested in what’s going on there. It will be a really fun event with tons of my favorite authors in attendance…there’s even going to be a historical costume fashion show!

The rules: This giveaway is open to entrants with a US mailing address. Giveaway ends 5/23. Fill out the form below and hit submit to enter for your chance to win. Blog/tweet/sidebar this giveaway for extra entries (one extra entry per blog post/tweet/sidebar) and provide link(s) where indicated on the form.

On my Michelin map I could barely find Cirey, the tiny village where the chateau in which Emilie du Châtelet and Voltaire lived sequestered for years is located. To go from there to my next stop took me through hours and hours of beautiful fields and vineyards, but almost no towns. I was in search of a place equally small, the village of Étoges.

Why Étoges? I must confess one of the secrets of writing historical fiction: you work with what you have. I couldn’t fudge on Cirey because it really was the Marquis du Châtelet’s ancestral home and it really was where Emilie and Voltaire lived. However, I needed a chateau for some other scenes in the book, and it ended up being Étoges through a process so, well, practical, that I am almost afraid to share it for fear the sense of destiny, which to me figures so strongly in the novel, will be shattered. But I’ll tell you anyway, because if you’re reading this, we’re friends, right?

My trip to France was not nearly as long as I wanted, and I needed to be practical about the distance I could cover. Since my partner was going to do some collaboration with fellow scientists in Strasbourg as part of our trip, he and I decided we would stick only to places between Paris, Strasbourg and Geneva, our point of departure for home.

I did some searching for chateaux along our route, and found it cumbersome to sort through what was open, what was ruined, and what was unsuitable for other reasons. Then I hit on the idea of looking only for chateaux that had rooms available for guests, so we could spend the night and have a chance to look around at leisure. I found only a couple, Étoges among them. I checked out the website and decided it would do quite nicely. Very well then, I said to myself. The character who needs a chateau will be named Laurent d’Étoges and this will be his home.

Finally, months later, there we were. The town is too small to have even a tavern or restaurant, so the chateau experience included a wonderful dinner complete with the local beverage, real champagne! We stayed in a room I imagined belonging to my heroine Lili, and I truly felt as if I slept in her bed, brushed my hair at her dressing table, and washed my face in her basin–albeit with running water.

I don’t want to do any plot spoilers, so I’ll just say that the photo of me lounging on the grass is exactly the spot where Lili and Delphine sat for an important scene near the end of the book. The view looking out over the grass to the chateau is what they would have seen, although much of the surroundings would have been planted in formal gardens at the time.

Just before we left to continue our journey to yet another remote chateau, the one at Ferney, where Voltaire spent his life after the death of Emilie, I had a chance to sit down with the present owner of the chateau at Étoges, and in halting French (mine not hers), we discussed the history of the place.

I learned a few interesting tidbits. Apparently this was the home of one of Louis XV’s wife’s best friends, and despite the modest size and remote location, it was one of the queen’s favorite getaways. Later, when Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette rushed east to get across the border to safety at the beginning of the French Revolution, Étoges was one of the places they stayed. But neither of these facts was helpful to me. Instead I cared about a little detail tucked away in the middle of a paragraph in the middle of the book.

Historical novelists are funny birds. At the same time we feel free to embellish and invent to fill out a story, we absolutely salivate at digging out new facts. I completely invented Laurent d’Etoges, based on nothing more than finding the most convenient home for him, but when the owner shared with me a booklet someone had written about the chateau, there was the name of the man who had been Comte d’Étoges at the time. Not Laurent but Ambroise. Ambroise de Clément-Feuillet to be exact.

At home and back to the keyboard, that’s who he became, even though I really do like the name Laurent better. It’s very happy making to know I’m right. And it’s happy making indeed to look back and think about that lovely little corner of Champagne and the beautiful little chateau where I can still imagine my characters Lili and Delphine relaxing in the cool air of a summer morning, just as I was not too long ago.

About the Author
LAUREL CORONA is the author of PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER (Berkley Books 2010),THE FOUR SEASONS, a novel of Vivaldi’s Venice (Hyperion/VOICE 2008), and FINDING EMILIE (S&S/Gallery 2011). She also wrote UNTIL OUR LAST BREATH: A HOLOCAUST STORY OF LOVE AND PARTISAN RESISTANCE (St. Martin’s 2008). Please visit her website and blog at www.laurelcorona.com, and her special website for PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER, “Xanthe’s World,” at www.pensdaughter.blogspot.com.

While much is known about the life of Claude Monet, very little is known about his great love, Camille Doncieux. This lack of information gave you a wonderfully broad creative license to shape Camille’s character! How did you go about piecing together the nuances of her personality?

"Camille" or "Woman in the Green Dress" by Claude Monet, c. 1866

Camille was very complicated to create: we know such little about her. I spent a long time studying reproductions of his paintings of her in books. A few are quite sad (the one on the sofa in London, the one outside the window in the snow looking like a left-out child in red kerchief.) I think he only did one of her smiling, the one in the Japanese costume. But (and this is the strange and mystical way books are written) when I had him find her in the bookshop writing to some person whom he will not identify until the end of the book, I knew she was a mystery to him and to us. And she was a mystery to herself as well. I never worked so intensely with an editor as I did with the gifted Suzanne O’Neill at Crown who acquired the book. She kept asking questions about Camille and all these scenes would just spring into my mind. I also knew a few young women years ago who were a bit like her: thinking suffering for art was romantic, making up her life as a great story because she hated the pettiness of her bourgeois family, inventing lovers and all sorts of things until Claude can’t understand what is truth and what is not and neither can she. I could never plan to create a character like Camille; she just showed up in a way.

Your book illustrates for readers how closely knit the Impressionists were, through the good times and the bad. What do you think it was that kept them going under such stressful–at times, dire–circumstances?

Well, Auguste Renoir said, “We stood shoulder-to-shoulder against the world.” He also said he would have quit had not Monet kept him going. I think when you have the sort of talent these young men did, there is no leaving it.

Without giving too much away, do you view Claude and Camille’s relationship as a great romance, or a great tragedy?

I think it’s both a great romance and a great tragedy, but the tragedy is brought on too early by all the poverty they faced. I think they still loved each other intensely no matter what they faced.

If forced to choose, which is your personal favorite of Monet’s many works?

"Vétheuil, Ice Floes" by Claude Monet, c. 1880-1881

My favorite is from the period of the novel; a painting of the village of Vétheuil seen from across the icy river in winter. I actually knew Monet’s earlier paintings before I ever looked much at his flower/water lily paintings which he did in his older years. I finally really looked at those in the Marmottan Museum in Paris and burst into tears, they are so emotional. They’re big; you are caught in a huge world of daffodils or water lilies. They are not so very peaceful when you see them up close; they move all over the place. Now I’m talking about the water lily paintings! But I think it’s very odd and wonderful that the paintings which are so spiritual to us were painted by a man who claimed it was not spiritual.

Have you thought about what topic/time period you next book might cover? If so, what can you tell us about it?

I am well into the second draft of new novel set in Victorian London about the love story of the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning. She was an invalid of 40 and still very beautiful when he found her in her father’s house and snatched her away from her family to live in Florence with him. I am also working on a 16th century novel set in an English abbey, about the goddaughter of the abbot who grows up in the monastery working in the library with her father and falls in love in a dangerous way. England was my first love in history and I set my first 3 novels there. The love of it has come pouring back to me! I very much regret never having written a queen novel. Who knows, maybe I’ll try one day! But there are so many terrific writers out there writing about English queens and royalty!

About the Author
STEPHANIE COWELL is a historical novelist with a passionate interest in bringing the great artists, musicians and writers of the past “to vivid life” (as the NY Times said) between the covers of a book. Her latest novel CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET was originally published by Crown in April 2010; the paperback version released April 5th, 2011. Currently on sale in many languages and editions is MARRYING MOZART, the story of Mozart’s romantic involvement with the four Weber sisters of Vienna. Stephanie is also the author of three novels set in Elizabethan times (W.W. Norton): NICHOLAS COOKE, THE PHYSICIAN OF LONDON and THE PLAYERS: A NOVEL OF THE YOUNG SHAKESPEARE.

Giveaway

Leave a comment on this post for your chance to win one of five paperback copies of Claude & Camille. Giveaway is open to entrants with a US mailing address.

I cannot even tell you how excited I am for the release of the first book in this trilogy. Although there have been a few MA novels in the past, none have had that sweeping, evocative quality (think Josephine B. trilogy by Sandra Gulland) a Marie Antoinette novel really should. I have high hopes for this one. Becoming Marie Antoinette releases August 9th, 2011.

THE LION IN WINTER (1968)
Played by: Katharine Hepburn
No summation of Eleanor films would be complete without The Lion in Winter. When I am reading historical fiction about Eleanor in her later years, I cannot help but envision Katharine Hepburn in the role that won her an Oscar for Best Actress. The Lion in Winter is set in 1183 AD, and Henry II is holding Christmas court. He invites his mistress Alais (a Princess of France), Alais’s brother Phillip (the King of France), his imprisoned wife Eleanor, and their three sons John, Richard, and Geoffrey. Here he hopes to announce his heir – and each of his invited guests hopes to have some claim to the throne. The film was adapted to a TV Miniseries with Glenn Close as Eleanor (she won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Made for Television).

BECKET (1964)
Played by: Pamela Brown
As Lord Chancellor of England, Thomas Becket was Henry II’s friend and confidante. Henry thought to widen his range of power in both Church and State when he appointed Becket Archbishop of Cantebury in 1162, but a rift is created between the two when Becket decides to obey God before his King. It is not known what Eleanor’s real role was in this conflict historically and Becket takes many liberties. But it’s a great movie and I enjoyed Pamela Brown’s performance as Eleanor. There was also a silent film version of Becket from the early 1920s, with Mary Clare cast as Eleanor.