Go offline with the Player FM app!
Adam Zamoyski, "Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess" (William Collins, 2024)
Manage episode 435879848 series 2421522
Princess Izabela Czartoryska was a towering figure of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual life. Married at sixteen to a distinguished older aristocrat, she amassed learning, influence, and a role in both Polish and European statecraft through encounters with figures ranging from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Joseph II of Austria. After the liquidation of her homeland’s sovereignty with its third partition in 1795, she spent the final decades of her life pioneering and curating spaces of preservation, both of Polish nationhood and of the human experience writ large.
Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess (William Collins, 2024) is her definitive biography, penned by distinguished historian Adam Zamoyski—the protagonist’s great-great-great-grandson. Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Zamoyski has told her story as one of empowerment, education, and encounter in an age of profound national and international upheaval.
Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). His most recent writings appeared in The Atlantic and in Foreign Affairs.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
1562 episodes
Manage episode 435879848 series 2421522
Princess Izabela Czartoryska was a towering figure of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century European cultural and intellectual life. Married at sixteen to a distinguished older aristocrat, she amassed learning, influence, and a role in both Polish and European statecraft through encounters with figures ranging from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Joseph II of Austria. After the liquidation of her homeland’s sovereignty with its third partition in 1795, she spent the final decades of her life pioneering and curating spaces of preservation, both of Polish nationhood and of the human experience writ large.
Izabela the Valiant: The Story of an Indomitable Polish Princess (William Collins, 2024) is her definitive biography, penned by distinguished historian Adam Zamoyski—the protagonist’s great-great-great-grandson. Trawling through a vast family archive and arcane sources in half a dozen languages, Zamoyski has told her story as one of empowerment, education, and encounter in an age of profound national and international upheaval.
Piotr H. Kosicki is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Catholics on the Barricades (Yale, 2018) and editor, among others, of Political Exile in the Global Twentieth Century (with Wolfram Kaiser). His most recent writings appeared in The Atlantic and in Foreign Affairs.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography
1562 episodes
All episodes
×Welcome to Player FM!
Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.