Napoleona: l’avventurosa storia di una nipote dell’Imperatore (In Italian)

 
From the publishers
Even as a child, Napoleona Elisa Bacciochi, daughter of Elisa Bonaparte, was a miniature version of the emperor, the same look, the same character (quick to anger and overbearing). She grew up with absolute belief in the Napoleonic myth and in 1830 became involved in a plot dreamed up by the Bonaparte cousins which aimed at placing the Duke of Reichstadt (son of Napoleon) at the head of a future kingdom of Italy.
She was of a restless and demanding disposition and was often prey to a manias for travelling and doing “business”. Indeed, Madame Napoléon spent much of her rich and eventful life on the move. When Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was elected president of the French republic, later to become emperor Napoleon III, she joined him in Paris. She found Second Empire court life, however, unsuited to her and retired to the Morbihan, in Brittany, where she launched herself enthusiastically into her project to run her farm. She died in 1869, much loved and greatly missed by a local population which had seen her as a reference point.
Of all the women in the House of Bonaparte – for most part authoritarian, intelligent and active ladies – Napoleona was certainly one of the strongest and most eccentric. This study reveals the complexity and ambivalence of her character, as she oscillated between arrogance and insecurity, energy and inability to complete anything, but nevertheless remaining faithful to her family and to what she perceived as her destiny.
 
About the author
A. Angelica Zucconi is librarian at La Sapienza University in Rome. She is author two essays, “Il poeta, lo scienziato, l'amico. Giacomo Leopardi, Carlo Luciano Bonaparte, Antonio Ranieri”, in Leopardi a Roma (Electa 1998) and “I migliori anni della nostra vita: i savants in Egitto”, in Napoleone Bonaparte in Egitto (Gangemi 2000). 
 
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