![]() (A definitive biography of Josephine is therefore impossible I offer this only as a general biography with a new accent.) Many of these books, however, have been written by Napoleon enthusiasts whose real interest lay in finding a new angle from which to approach Bonaparte. There have been nearly sixty biographies written about her in the two centuries since her death. ![]() But the more that I discovered about her, the more I was swept away by her dramatic and tumultuous life.Īs a biographical subject Josephine has benefited from our enduring fascination with her illustrious second husband, Napoleon Bonaparte. ![]() So it was the little-explored story of Josephine’s early years that attracted me to her as a subject. The fact that Josephine and Napoleon were both immigrants, for example, explained for me the intensity of that bond which so many commentators have described as improbable. It seemed to me that this background and these experiences had a profoundly formative impact on Josephine the woman, and that by neglecting them we risk misunderstanding her entirely. We were both born in the Caribbean, descendants of plantation dynasties we were both brought to the Old World in mid-adolescence and had to find our way in a society brutally different from that we had left behind. I was initially drawn to Josephine through a sense of personal identification. ![]()
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