Catherine the Great

by Katharine Susan Anthony

CATHERINE THE GREAT is primarily a story wherein author Katharine Anthony has woven the portrait of a real woman into the pattern of 18th Century politics. The reader is introduced to Catherine, the statesman, who unites Russia, destroys Poland and participates in the American Revolutionary War. The reader also sees Catherine, the jealous mistress of men, who at sixty has a lover of twenty-five. The book has particular interest in its bearing on Catherine's celebrated love life. ABOUT THE Katharine Susan Anthony (1877-1965), was an American biographer best known for The Lambs (1945), a controversial study of the British writers Charles and Mary Lamb. The greater portion of her work examined the lives of notable American women. A college teacher of geometry, Anthony was deeply interested in psychiatry. Eventually this interest came to shape her approach to biography, and her books centred increasingly on the psychological development and motivation of her subjects. Some of these works include Margaret Fuller, A Psychological Biography (1920); CATHERINE THE GREAT (1925); Louisa May Alcott (1938); Dolly Madison, Her Life and Times (1949); and Susan B. Anthony, Her Personal History and Her Era (1954). Anthony’s readers were scandalized by The Lambs, subtitled A Story of Pre-Victorian England, in which she theorized that incestuous feelings within the Lamb family were reflected in the lives and literary collaborations of Charles Lamb and his sister, Mary. As with her previous biographies, The Lambs brought a mixed response from critics, many of whom objected to her unscholarly approach to biography and her unprofessional application of psychoanalytic theory.

Genres: Biography

331 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

Reviews

[Kelly Hohenstern · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazing that this German princess was able to endure such horrible conditions - yet she endured all and rose to become one of the greatest Empresses Russia has ever known.

[Gabby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a sassy biography, I laughed so much.