COURTESAN PRINCESS - Catherine Grand - Princesse de Talleyrand by Joelson, Annette - 1966

London: Alvin Redman Limited, 1966. (xi) 279 pp. Black boards lettered in gilt on the spine. Light wear on the corners of the dustjacket; price intact; no interior markings. When her family moved to a French colony in India, she met George Francis Grand, a British civil servant of Huguenot descent stationed at Calcutta. They were wed in1778, when Catherine was barely sixteen. The couple separated soon after, because of her brief but scandalous affair with Sir Philip Francis, deputy of Warren Hastings, and Madame Grand removed to London. By 1783, when Vigee Le Brun painted her portrait there, Catherine Grand had become a courtesan in Paris; she returned to Britain just before the French Revolution in 1789. In 1794, she returned to France and there attracted the attention of French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, with whom she lived as mistress until 1802, when Napoleon Bonaparte told Talleyrand to marry her. A delightfully unorthodox woman, the Chapters are: Pictures through a Spyglass; Awakening; La Belle Indienne; The Years Between; Questa Donna; and The Last Act; followed by a bibliography and an index.. First UK Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo. Book.