Married to one of Imperial Germany's wealthiest princes, Daisy of Pless nee Cornwallis-West occupied a prominent place in Edwardian Society. The biography of Princess Daisy of Pless becomes a journey of discovery through the life of a woman who was beautiful, intelligent, idealistic, and creative in pursuing her humanitarian and political goals. Daisy of Pless was the friend of King Edward VII and Emperor Wilhelm II. She fought against many adversities for the betterment of life of the poor and the working class and for peace in Europe. In the end, although as a woman and as a member of her class she was ahead of her time, her accomplishments went unrecognized and she was quickly forgotten except by the poor and the working people of Lower Silesia she had helped so effectively. Celebrated as one of the great beauties of Edwardian England and as the glamorous hostess of the international set at Castle Furstenstein in Imperial Germany, Daisy of Pless led a life of remarkable triumphs that ended suddenly with the onset of the Great War.Between 1914 and 1918, condemned to life in enemy country, she served as auxiliary nurse on German and Austrian hospital trains in France and in Serbia. Her last triumph was the publication of her diaries after 1927. Her life ended in a great tragedy of chronic illness, social isolation, and poverty. With this startling biography, the accomplishments of Daisy of Pless may rise from obscurity to a recognized place in history and inspire readers everywhere.

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In this uproarious memoir and meticulously researched cultural journey, writer Michael Moran keeps company with a gallery of fantastic characters. In chronicling the resurrection of the nation from war and the Holocaust, he paints a portrait of the unknown Poland, one of monumental castles, primeval forests and, of course, the Poles themselves. This captivating journey into the heart of a country is a timely and brilliant celebration of a valiant and richly cultured people.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The selected correspondence of the brilliant poet, one of the twentieth century's last great letter writers. "I don't keep a journal, not after the first week," James Merrill asserted in a letter while on a trip around the world. "Letters have got to bear all the burden." A vivacious correspondent, whether abroad, where avid curiosity and fond memory frequently took him, or at home, he wrote eagerly and often, to family and lifelong friends, American and Greek lovers, confidants in literature and art about everything that mattered—aesthetics, opera and painting, housekeeping and cooking, the comedy of social life, the mysteries of the Ouija board and the spirit world, and psychological and moral dilemmas—in funny, dashing, unrevised missives, composed to entertain himself as well as his recipients. On a personal nemesis: "the ambivalence I live with. It worries me less and less. It becomes the very stuff of my art"; on a lunch for Wallace Stevens given by Blanche Knopf: "It had been decided by one and all that nothing but small talk would be allowed"; on romance in his late fifties: "I must stop acting like an orphan gobbling cookies in fear of the plate's being taken away"; on great books: "they burn us like radium, with their decisiveness, their terrible understanding of what happens." Merrill's daily chronicle of love and loss is unfettered, self-critical, full of good gossip, and attuned to the wicked irony, the poignant detail—a natural extension of the great poet's voice.

The fin-de-siecle aura of high society before the War is nowhere better exemplified than on the images created by the Lafayette Studio, the major fashionable photographers or the period. All the trappings of extravagant aristocracy, the impractical, intricate details for couture gowns, the improbable hourglass figures and the gleaming cars of the early motorists are frozen for posterity memorials of a society swept away with the Great War, whose self-confidence now appears more poignant than well-founded. This was the era of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, the Devonshire House Ball and the sinking of the Titanic. This book, published to tie in with major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, is a critical investigation of these photographic portraits of aristocracy and royalty, interpreting them within the context of their period and approaching them as emblematic of a society that was on the brink of collapse. As well as a visual treat, the reader can explore the various themes these pictures raise.

The rhinoceros is an iconic animal. Three species once inhabited South Asia, two of which disappeared over a century ago. This survey aims to reconstruct the historical distribution of these large mammals resulting in new maps showing the extent of their occurrences. Thousands of sources varied in time and nature are used to study the interactions between man and rhinoceros. The text is supported by over 700 illustrations and 38 maps showing the importance of the rhinoceros in the scientific and cultural fabric of Asia and beyond.

A comprehensive and versatile source for researchers in a broad range of disciplines, Women in Context is a biographical, analytical, and critical bibliography of narrative autobiographies written by over eight hundred women born in the United Kingdom and British territories from the mid-eighteenth century to mid-twentieth centuries. Each entry provides publication and catalog information, a brief biographical sketch, an analysis of the topical content, and a critical comment on style, tone, and purpose of the autobiography.

'United across centuries, these women's voices open doors to lost worlds and make them seem familiar. A modern classic.' – Alison Weir, author and historian. A captivating collection of daily extracts from women's diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women's experience – of men and children, sex and shopping, work and the natural world – has changed down the years. And, of course, how it hasn't. Organised around the calendar year, in this engaging anthology you'll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV's Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California. With several selections for each day, from the 1st January to the 31st December, this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events. From Virginia Woolf relishing her new haircut and Oprah Winfrey meditating on her career to Emilie Davis chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln and teenage Ma Yan yearning for education in poverty-stricken China, Secret Voices contains a rich mix of well-known diarists and less familiar ones, and often the voices echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today.