Rating: 
Summary: Sparkling and Scholarly
Review: Lady Antonia Fraser has turned out another brilliant biography. Although she has left her native Great Britain for France in this life of Marie Antoinette, the result is a work that brings France's last Queen to life as vividly as any of her earlier efforts.Marie Antoinette was one of the younger children of Empress Maria Theresa, who used her off spring as bargaining chips to improve the Hapsburg Dynasty's position in Europe. Antoine, as she was known, was unfortunate enough to be the right age to marry the heir to the French throne. Fraser spends a lot of time discussing the cold blooded negotiations that preceded 14 year old Antoine's being shipped off to France to marry the 15 year old Dauphin. Not surprisingly, this marriage of children was unfruitful for several years. In reaction to this and to the iron clad etiquette of the court at Versailles, Marie Antoinette ( as she was now known) led a frivolous life of partying, gambling, and spending. Fraser does a good job in pointing out that Marie's spending habits were only a drop in the bucket of France's mounting economic crisis in the 1770s and 1780s, but her extreme visibility made her an easy target for the rising public anger against the monarchy. Fraser also does a good job of documenting the love affair Marie had with Count Axel Fersen as well as the infamous Diamond Necklace Affair, which ruined her reputation once and for all. After Louis XVI matured enough to father four children on Marie, the Queen settled down to a calmer, quieter life, but the damage was done. She had become the symbol of everything that was wrong with the Old Regime, and after 1789 she and her family slid to destruction. Fraser does an admirable job on the last harrowing years of the Queen's life, helping us recognize the dignity and courage displayed by the Royal Family in their darkest hour. Fraser concentrated primarily on Marie Antoinette's personal life. The events of Louis XVI's reign and of the Revolution are seen only as they directly affected the Queen. Throughout the book Fraser writes clearly and with a felicitous turn of phrase: the fishwives who harassed the Queen at Versailles were "mouthy battleaxes." Some of Fraser's wittiest comments are in the footnotes, including a delicious speculation on Benjamin Franklin's connection to the conception of the Queen's first child! Fraser's wit and humor combine with her sound scholarship to make Marie Antoinette: The Journey, a treasure not to be missed.
Rating:
Summary: The real Marie Antoinette
Review: Antonia Fraser does a wonderful job of describing what Marie Antoinette was like as a person. She shows how the young girl, who was only fifteen when she married, became the Queen of France and grew into a mature woman while in the strange environment of the Court of Versailles where privacy was unknown for the Royal family, even to the point of reports being made of her sex life with the King and when her menstrual periods occurred. It seems everyone in the court knew everything, in embarrassing detail, about the young Queen.
The book explains well, however, how the Queen coped with this life on display, especially during the early years of her marriage when many ridiculed her for not producing an heir, and gives one a sense of knowing her personally. That makes the book a captivating read.
Rating:
Summary: Another chef-d'oeuvre from Antonia Fraser
Review: This biography is a vivid example of how life is not black and white but purely gray.... Marie Antoinette is there, first as a spoiled child, poorly educated, cherished by her family only for the prospect of creating alliance for the country they run... Only marriage and children are expected from her... Then at 14, leaves for France, she even barely speaks French, finds herself in the middle of a culture she does not belong to... She is not smart enough to manage the relations... She finds herself immerged in pleasure and fun... And then comes the Revolution of which she really does not understand anything at all... You pity her for her stupidity, for her lack of insight, for her being so naive as well.... She is not a saint as pictured by royalist, she is not the "l'autrichienne" as revolutionists depict her... She is just a human being not readied for her role, not equipped with intelligence, wit nor wisdom required by her position in the history... Antonia Fraser did an excellent job to bring her back to life as she was, protected from the prejudices of history...
Rating:
Summary: The Tragic Queen
Review: Long a fan of Antonia Fraser's meticulously researched writing, her current offering on the tragic life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, has climbed new heights in scholarship. She writes as a sympathetic but silent witness to this woman's travails, from the time of her sharply curtailed happy adolescent life to her eventual execution and brings her to life in such a way that tears were coursing down my cheeks by the time I had finished the book, I was so deeply moved - and I don't weep easily. Anyone interested in the period around the French Revolution or in the French Royal Family should read this. It is a very powerful book and one that will stay in my mind for a long time.
Rating:
Summary: Tragic Story of French Revolution's Famous Victim
Review: Lady Antonia Fraser newest biography is a familiar story but she fortunately brings many new facts and forgotten figures to light. By including "The Journey" in her title, Lady Fraser's
main purpose is to convince the reader that Marie Antoinette did
indeed transform herself from the frivolous and disinterested Queen she was purported to be. This the author accomplishes brilliantly and with the historical facts needed to back herself up.
Within the first few pages, Lady Fraser thoroughly trounces that famous and oft-repeated statement attributed to the Queen ("Let them eat cake!")as nothing more than a vicious slur while
acknowledging it as the first of many to do permanent damage to her image and character. Lady Fraser is able to separate rumors
from facts and does so through her inexhaustible research and innumerable sources. The long and painful incarceration of the Royal Family is quite detailed here and sheds new light on not only the ill-treatment of the Queen, but particularly of her son (who died miserably and isolated in captivity).
This is undoubtedly a sad story but one not unique for the victims of the French Revolution: a revolution that ended up
devouring itself and its leaders in the immolation of the Terror.
Lady Fraser certainly makes the case that, like most of the victims of this volatile period, Marie Antoinette was sentenced to death by a pre-arranged "kangaroo court" and was in essence
"murdered" not for what she had done, but for who she had been.
A rather sly reference in the epilogue notes that her chief harasser on the Revolutionary Committee, Jaques Hebert, ended
up in the same graveyard as the former Queen within a few short months: a deserving victim of the chaos and terror that he himself instigated.
All in all, Lady Antonia Fraser has written an outstanding
biography that compares well with her previous work and, in some instances, surpasses it. Thanks to this book, readers and historians alike will be able to obtain a far truer and balanced picture of a much-maligned historical figure. It is certainly a "Journey" worth taking.
Rating:
Summary: Romance, reality and terror
Review: I have read numerous books on this topic, from Quentin Reynolds 1950's schoolbook biography through the memoirs of Madame Campan and Oliver Bernier's edition of the letters between Marie Antoinette and her mother, Empress Maria Theresa. In none of these previous books have I found the small touches of personality which humanize this well-biographed personality of Revolutionary France. In specific, I find the details of her relationship to her own daughter, Marie Therese, of great interest. That Marie Antoinette was aware of the reasonably immature snobbishness of her daughter is an interesting insight. Of course the incredible brutality of the revolutionaries - in the name of freedom - and the making of both the king and his wife into scapegoats, as well as the vileness of the pamplets published by ambitious would be kings and unfortunately, relatives of the king create sympathy for both monarchs. The revolution was about the abolition of privilege, yet the very people taking down the nobility, took on their former privileges for themselves, and would soon replace the late Louis XVI with his two brothers, a nephew and two emperors, demonstrating how pointless the deaths of the monarchs was. Revolution, indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: Much too biased -
Review: This book is very anti-french and pro-aristocratic and makes much effort to present the past in such light. It is incredibly tedious with overwhelming amounts of detail. The truth usually lies somewhere in between and that is certainly not what is presented here. Antonia Fraser made fiction from historic materials.
Rating:
Summary: Deeply Moving
Review: I normally read history looking for battles and excitement (Napoleon bios for example), or looking for funny stuff. In this case I bought the book because of the charming picture on the cover, and was surprised to find myself so deeply moved. Marie Antoinette was flawed, as Fraser tells us often enough, but she was also good and lovable. To see her slowly, inexoribly moving toward what we know is going to be a horrible fate is quite gut-wrenching, but compelling all the same. Fraser has also done a fine job of setting up the social atmosphere of the period (and I couldn't care less if she got a few details wrong). Whichever reviewer said that it should be a TV movie was right! This modern take on a traditionally maligned woman could easily capture the hearts of millions of North American television--or movie--viewers.
Rating:
Summary: Not a journey; a defense
Review: Antonia Fraser's tome should be entitled MA, a defense. Ms. Fraser examines the Austrian B****'s life and finds her "not guilty." She didn't say anything about cake, actually thought she had enough diamonds when she was 14 that she certainly didn't need the diamond necklace; she loved poor people, and on and on. Louis XVI never had surgery but gained his sexual power from two chats with the emperor. Ms. Fraser is clear about one thing, however. The AB conspired with her mother and her mother's successors to try to get France to act against the interests of Frenchmen.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece
Review: You don't have to like biographies to like this book. It is fun of interesting facts and tid bits that are just fascinating. When I bought this book, all I had to do was read the first page and I was caught in the turbulant waters of life of Marie Antoinette. It is a book that ever history class should have to read, because it gives the read a true feeling for what the time period and sitation was really like.
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