Letters From Sun King City

Let's take three short looks at books by or about three fascinating females who had nothing whatever in common save their sex.

Letters from Liselotte (McCall; $8.95) is a careful selection, expertly translated by Maria Kroll, of letters from Elisabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, who left her beloved Germany to become the second wife of Louis XIV's brother, the Duke of Orleans. If they don't entertain you, either your sense of history is non-existent or something strange has lately happened to your sense of humor.

Liselotte wrote back to her relatives and friends at home every scandalous, exciting detail of life at the court of the Sun King. She quite liked her regal brother-in-law (when he deigned to notice her) but she found it difficult to adjust to a blatantly homosexual husband whose principal interest was in clothes (for both sexes) and to whom she was nothing but another dynasty-manufacturing machine.

THIS proud princess who was connected with almost every important personage in Europe hated being treat-

By Eugenia Thornton

ed like a nobody, especially by her arch-enemy, powerful Madame de Montespan. After all, if the king ruled France, the king was ruled by that implacable lady.

Nevertheless,

Liselotte

made a life for herself. Out of her loneliness she created a world of humorous observation, satirical truth and outspoken character which give her letters a fitting place beside the memoirs of Saint-Simon and the missives of Madame de Sevigne. I urge you to read them and rejoice.

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