Catherine the Great Selected Letters Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev

 Catherine the Great Selected

Letters Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Andrew Kahn and Kelsey Rubin-Detlev is an Oxford Classics released by the beloved publishing house in 2018.

Immense, important character, this Empress changed the face of Russia for better. She started her reign in 1762 for dying in 1796. 

Legislator, diplomat during the Seven Years War, she played also an active role the years that followed the French Revolution and a new order. 

Having lived in a period of great literary fertility, she was a woman of literary ambition and a voracious letter-writer. 

Letter-writing for Catherine meant a sort of autobiography and a literary delight.

Catherine although assisted by some people, always replied personally to monarchs and diplomats. Her correspondence included generals, aristocrats and doctors. Catherine wrote to 220 people during her existence. If we consider that the Russian court took in consideration correspondence with 400 people, the work of letter-writing of Catherine has been simply amazing. 

It's also thanks to the correspondence with a lot of people that we can understand the complexity of her character. At that time letter-writing was the direct reflection of the literary fertility caused hy the High Enlightenment. Born Princess Sophia Augusta Fredericka of Anhalt-Zerbst, she left for Russia in 1744 to marry Karl Peter Ulrich Holstein-Gottorf, future Emperor Peter III.

This man was the son of Peter the Great and named future emperor of Russia by the aunt Elizabeth Petrovna. Sophia, after the acceptance of the Ortodox religion became at court Ekaterina Alkseevna.  

It wasn't at all a happy marriage the one of Catherine with Peter III: she also didn't find a gentle environment at court at first. With the time she became a self-made woman. After that Peter III was removed from the throne she consolidated her position, modernizing Russian institutions, governance. Catherine conquered during her reign Ottoman lands, annexed Crimea, and many more lands. 

Divided in six parts and treated chronologically, these letters wants to be also a historical trace pretty real, of the Empress.

Enjoy the reading!

Highly recommended book.

I thank Oxford Press for the copy of the book.

Anna Maria Polidori