Your Royal Library

There are plenty of books on this particular subject and in case you do not want to scroll through the Reading the Realms-section - or just want a clear view - here is a list of books that just might interest you.

The Kings, Queens and Courtiers:

• Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Lady Antonia Fraiser
• Louis XIV by Dunlop
• Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon
• Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France by Christine Pevitt Algrant
• Louis the Beloved by Olivier Bernier
• Madame de Sévigné's Letters
• Brother to the Sun King: Philippe, Duke of Orleans by Nancy Nichols Barker
• First Lady of Versailles: Marie Adélaide of Savoy, Dauphine of France by Lucy Norton
• The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Madame de Maintenon by Veronica Buckley
• The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury
• Madame du Barry: the Wages of Beauty by Joan Haslip
• The King's Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray by Nina Rattner Gelbart
• A Day with Marie Antoinette by Helene Delalex and Francis Hammond
• Marie Thérèse: the Fate of Marie Antoinette's Daughter by Susan Nagel
• Love and Louis XIV by Lady Antonia Fraiser
• The Real Queen of France: Athénaïs and Louis XIV by Lisa Hilton
• The Man who Outshone the Sun King by Charles Drazin
• Louis XIV: a Royal Life by Olivier Bernier
• Philippe, Duc d'Orlèans: Regent of France by Christine Pevitt
• Princesse of Versailles: The Life of Marie Adelaide of Savoy by Charles W. Elliot
• La Grande Mademoiselle at the Court of France by Vincent J. Pitts

Lady Antonia Fraiser's "Marie Antoinette: the Journey" - my favourite book on Marie Antoinette

The Palace & Gardens

• Versailles: A Private Invitation by Francis Hammond and Guillaume Picon
• The Sun King's Garden by Ian Thompson
• Vaux and Versailles by Claire Goldstein
• From Marie Antoinette's Garden by Élisabeth de Feydeau
• The Gardener of Versailles by Alain Baraton
• Versailles: a Biography of a Palace by Tony Spawford
• Gardens of Versailles by Beatrix Saule

"Versailles: A Private Invitation" offers an inside glimpse of the palace

Fashion & Jewellery

• Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Fashion in Detail by Avril Hart
• Fashion Victims by Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell
• 18th century Embroidery Techniques by Gail Marsh
• Dress in France in the 18th Century by Madeleine Delpierre
• The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London by Hannah Greig
• Embroidered with White by Heather Toomer
• Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber
• Eighteenth Century French Fashion in Full Colour by Stella Blum
• Dressed to Rule by Philip Mansel
• Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV by Kathryn Norberg and Sandra Rosenbaum

A part of a series of fashion history

Court Life & Events

• The Queen's Necklace by Frances Mossiker
• The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV by Anne Somerset
• The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV & the Politics of Spectacle by Georgia J. Cowart

Another book in my inventory! The Affair of the Poisons gives an insight into a far darker side of Louis XIV's court

Furniture & Art

• French Painting in the Seventeenth Century by Alain Mérot
• Furnishing the Eighteenth Century by Dena Goodma and Kathryn Norberg
• Paris: Life and Luxury in Eighteenth Century France by Charissa Bremer-David
• French Interiors of the 18th Century by John Whitehea
• Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th Century Europe by Katharine Baetjer and Marjorie Shelly
• Between Luxury and Everyday by Katie Scott
• Making Up the Rococo: Francois Boucher and his Critics by Melissa Hyde
• 17th and 18th Century Arts: Baroque Painting, Sculpture, Architecture by Julius Held and Donald Posner 

French Society

• The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV by W. H. Lewis
• Royal Censorship on Books in 18th-Century France by Raymond Birn
• Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth Century Paris by Thomas Crow

A wider look at what France looked like during Louis XIV

Fiction:

• Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors
• Farewell, My Queen by Chantal Thomas
• Dancing to the Precipice by Caroline Moorehead
• The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas
• To Dance with Kings by Rosalind Laker
• Days of Splendour, Days of Sorrow by Juliet Grey

Everything Else:

• The Libertine; the Art of Love in 18th-century France by Michel Delon
• The Road from Versailles: Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and the Fall of the French Monarchy by Munro Price
• The Devil in the Holy Water: the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon by Robert Darnton

"The Libertine"