Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding Biography
Review: Author Mitford has does an excellent job detailing the life of Madame de Pompadour, the long time mistress of Louis XV, King of France. Born into an upper class family (but not noble), Jeanne Poissons is adored by all. She marries young and has a daughter but longs for the attention of the King. Her home is close to his hunting lodge and she makes every attempt to come to his notice. Once she does, a love affair ensues. Most think that the relationship will not last because of her common origins, but Madame Pompadour proves them wrong. She makes a comfortable home for Louis XV inside of Versailles and quickly becomes the love of his life. Her influence on the court is profound as she introduces luminaries such as Voltaire to the King. Her taste and style is well regarded and her behavior to the Queen is exemplarary.The book is well illustrated and the writing is wonderful. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who loves French history.
Rating: 
Summary: History as Gossip
Review: History in the hands of Nancy Mitford is centred entirely on the personal - it is history as anecdote, gossip, inside story, in miniature. An earlier reviewer has perceptively identified Lytton Strachey as a literary ancestor for the kind of historical works that Mitford wrote, and there is more than a little of the Mitford novels in them as well ("Love in a Cold Climate," "The Pursuit of Love." In my view, Madame de Pompadour was more enjoyably treated in the other Mitford biography "The Sun King," which might have been a better choice as a New York Review of Books Classic. This book tends to get bogged down in details of geneology (lovingly dwelt on by the aristocratic Mitford), decorating and dresses, and in the end one feels that the author does not quite convince her readers to like her famous subject as much as she does. Nevertheless, "Madame de Pompadour" is well worth a read if you are interested in the period. Mitford's "Volatire in Love" is a related work that might also be of interest.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: I am a fan of history books, epecially biographies of Royal European women. I thought this book was very entertaining and interesting. I finished it in no time since I couldn't put it down. I like the way Mitford writes and will definately buy her other biographies (even though they are about men).
Rating:
Summary: Admiring and Admirable
Review: I have read that Mitford began this book with amusement and a certain degree of condescension, but finished it with a deep admiration for the woman who had been the mistress of a king. One of the things that I liked so much about this book is that you always see the affection and admiration, and it's so clear that it would be easy not to see that. In the histories that I have read to date that touch Versailles, many of the actual details of the period have been elided. It has come to be such shorthand for artificial elegance and extravagence that hardly any writers bother to explain what it was really about. The manners, the customs, the position of the nobility in France-- all these things were much clearer to me after reading Mitford's sparkling account than they were from any of the other history that I have read. For all that she chooses a seemingly frivolous main subject, Mitford never fails to point out how her subject applied or related to the key political questions of the time and the contrast is both entertaining and smart. Recommended for almost all kinds of readers-- I think this would be excellent if one would just like some relaxing entertainment and from my point of view it also helped give me a more real look at the historical period in France.
Rating: 
Summary: Fair Book
Review: I probably shouldn't write a review, as I have yet to actually finish this book. But I'm a history buff and I enjoy historical novels. The author comes across as a bit condescending and supercilious in placing French terms thoughout the book. She rattles them off without interpretation, as if we should all speak enough of the language to know what she's talking about. It's really annoying at best. I took 3 years of French, and still didn't get most of her maxims. It's also a bit slow and overly descriptive to the point that it gets boring. Hence my slowness to finish. It certainly hasn't sucked me into the story, so that I'm pouring over the pages and can't put it down...
Rating:
Summary: The Great Courtsean
Review: Nancy Mitford has a remarkable ability to blend historical fact with equally factual gossip and cunning insight. The result is a biography of great charm that offers much for both serious students of history and those who also enjoy the backstairs take on famous people -- beauty marks, warts and all. "Madame de Pompadour" is especially rich is limning the life of this great horizontal, with all its struggles, sorrows and triumphs (she was lovely, with elegant taste, a delightful companion, but sadly frigid). Pompadour, beautiful, charming, erudite and influential was the favorite of Louis XV for many years, and was loved and hated with equal intensity by his court. The books is lavishly illustrated with portraits of Pompadour, the King, courtiers, Versailles and its gardens and lush interiors, art and bijou -- all the luxury in over which she reigned and inspired. Ms. Mitford's prose in incomparable in its easy elegance and fluid felicity -- a great read by any standards. But do not mistake her light hand with light history. This is a biography of great richness and learned insight, giving us a portrait of a powerful woman during a fascinating chapter in French history.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Courtsean
Review: Nancy Mitford has a remarkable ability to blend historical fact with equally factual gossip and cunning insight. The result is a biography of great charm that offers much for both serious students of history and those who also enjoy the backstairs take on famous people -- beauty marks, warts and all. "Madame de Pompadour" is especially rich is limning the life of this great horizontal, with all its struggles, sorrows and triumphs (she was lovely, with elegant taste, a delightful companion, but sadly frigid). Pompadour, beautiful, charming, erudite and influential was the favorite of Louis XV for many years, and was loved and hated with equal intensity by his court. The books is lavishly illustrated with portraits of Pompadour, the King, courtiers, Versailles and its gardens and lush interiors, art and bijou -- all the luxury in over which she reigned and inspired. Ms. Mitford's prose in incomparable in its easy elegance and fluid felicity -- a great read by any standards. But do not mistake her light hand with light history. This is a biography of great richness and learned insight, giving us a portrait of a powerful woman during a fascinating chapter in French history.
Rating:
Summary: A biography as endlessly charming as its subject
Review: NYRB has done it again, in bringing forth a new edition of an early twentieth-century gem that needed to be reissued. Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour shimmers and sparkles with exquisite prose and a thorough handling of the facts; I couldn't put this down until I had read right through it from beginning to end. Mitford's style is very fluid and sophisticated: she can describe the endless diplomatic minutiae of the wrnagings during the Seven Years' War as impressively as she can detail the beautiful interiors of the Marquise's houses. Clearly she has mastered the style of Tacitean biography-as-history championed by Lytton Strachey decades earlier, although this fact seems lost on the writer of the edition's introduction, Amanda Foreman, who seems to be of the inaccurate conviction that Mitford was doing something entirely new. Indeed, the uninformedness of Foreman's preface and the edition's unfortunate lack of the illustrations that graced early versions of this biography are all that keep me from granting this a full five stars; it is nevertheless highly worth your while.
Rating:
Summary: What a great author!
Review: Since it is rather difficult to find a good interesting read about this time period, I was pleasantly surprised to find Nancy Mitford. Her book is not only educational, but written in a nice gossipy style that will keep you highly entertained. Enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: "Biography at its most candid"
Review: The 18th century story of King Louis XV's mistress, Madame De Pompadour. Biography at it's most candid: for example, Madame De Pompadour was so unpopular in her time that she couldn't travel in public without risking being pelted by mud and rocks.
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