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Secondary sourceBook1876

The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France

Charles Duke Yonge · 1876

An 1876 biography of Marie Antoinette drawing on published royal correspondence, written for general and younger readers.

This accessible biography studies Marie Antoinette's life using published family correspondence as its basis.

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Full text (public-domain edition)

About this source

What it is

This is a biography, The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, written by Charles Duke Yonge and published in 1876. It is available as a digitized e-book.

Why it matters

The author explains in his preface that he based the work on published collections of correspondence, including letters between Marie Antoinette, her mother Empress Maria Teresa, and her brothers Joseph and Leopold, as well as letters from the imperial ambassador Count Mercy d'Argenteau. He also notes that one of these letter collections had been accused of containing forgeries, showing how even historians must question their sources.

Why it matters

This biography was written to be accessible to younger readers while relying on real historical correspondence, making it a useful bridge between primary letters and general history.

Look closer

  • Why does the author mention that some of his source letters might be forgeries?
  • How might using the queen's own family letters change the picture a biographer presents?
  • What questions would you want to ask about a source before trusting it completely?

This book is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Marie Antoinette on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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