Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} The affair of the poisons by Frances Mossiker The affair of the poisons by Frances Mossiker. Completing the CAPTCHA proves you are a human and gives you temporary access to the web property. What can I do to prevent this in the future? If you are on a personal connection, like at home, you can run an anti-virus scan on your device to make sure it is not infected with malware. If you are at an office or shared network, you can ask the network administrator to run a scan across the network looking for misconfigured or infected devices. Another way to prevent getting this page in the future is to use Privacy Pass. You may need to download version 2.0 now from the Chrome Web Store. Cloudflare Ray ID: 658d45e289e984e0 • Your IP : 188.246.226.140 • Performance & security by Cloudflare. THE AFFAIR OF THE POISONS. Miss Mossiker has done it again, this time with the history of seventeenth-century France and its denizens rather than to Marie-Antoinette or to Napoleon and Josephine. The Affair of the Poisons is a well documented and twice-well told tale of the fumes of sulphur under the scent of perfume, of the witches, satanists, black masses and blacker magic which erupted into a monumental scandal during the reign of the Roi Soleil and which dragged into the mud of popular gossip the noblest names and fairest ladies of France during the Splendid Century. Among the aspects of the scandal to which the author devotes particular attention are the implication of Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress, and the role of the famous La Voisin, ""Queen of the Witches,"" in an episode of French history which, for sheer dramatic perversity, remained unequaled until the time of the equally famous ""Affair of the Diamond Necklace."" As in her previous works (The Queen's Necklace and Napoleon and Josephine), the author relies quite heavily, and quite expertly, on contemporary primary sources. In this book, however, are conspicuously absent those stylistic mannerisms which were as distracting as they were cloying. All in all this is very likely Miss Mossiker's best work. Unfortunately, because of the comparatively obscure nature of its subject, it may have the least popular appeal. THE AFFAIR OF THE POISONS. Miss Mossiker has done it again, this time with the history of seventeenth-century France and its denizens rather than to Marie-Antoinette or to Napoleon and Josephine. The Affair of the Poisons is a well documented and twice-well told tale of the fumes of sulphur under the scent of perfume, of the witches, satanists, black masses and blacker magic which erupted into a monumental scandal during the reign of the Roi Soleil and which dragged into the mud of popular gossip the noblest names and fairest ladies of France during the Splendid Century. Among the aspects of the scandal to which the author devotes particular attention are the implication of Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress, and the role of the famous La Voisin, ""Queen of the Witches,"" in an episode of French history which, for sheer dramatic perversity, remained unequaled until the time of the equally famous ""Affair of the Diamond Necklace."" As in her previous works (The Queen's Necklace and Napoleon and Josephine), the author relies quite heavily, and quite expertly, on contemporary primary sources. In this book, however, are conspicuously absent those stylistic mannerisms which were as distracting as they were cloying. All in all this is very likely Miss Mossiker's best work. Unfortunately, because of the comparatively obscure nature of its subject, it may have the least popular appeal. The Affair Of the Poisons; By Frances Mossiker. Illustrated. 336 pp. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. $7.95. " A piece of history is a better story than any novel which can be written about it," said William McElwee, himself a crime historian of distinction. He has proved it in his writings, and it is proved over again by Frances Mossiker's two books, "The Queen's Necklace" in 1961, and the present "The Affair of the Poisons." View Full Article in Timesmachine » Frances Mossiker Dies; Author and Historian. Frances Sanger Mossiker, a historian who wrote her first book at the age of 55 and became one of the few foreigners to be honored by the French for books about France, died Thursday at the Baylor Medical Center of a heart ailment. She was 79. Mrs. Mossiker attended the Hockaday School in Dallas and studied French and Romance languages at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she was accepted by Phi Beta Kappa in her junior year. She also studied at Barnard College in New York and the Sorbonne in Paris. A specialist in 17th- and 18th-century France, she wrote in a way that combined painstaking attention to detail with a lively style and made her a best-selling author on both sides of the Atlantic. While recovering from a radical mastectomy in the 1950's, she wrote books about 18th-century France. Her first book ''The Queen's Necklace,'' was published in 1961. That book was followed by ''Napoleon and Josephine'' in 1965, ''The Affair of the Poisons'' in 1969, ''Pocahontas: The Life and the Legend'' in 1976, and ''Madame de Sevigne: A Life and Letters'' in 1983.