DISBROWE, Charlotte Anne Albinia.

£1,250 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Original Letters From Russia. 1825-1828. First edition, one of 90 copies only, of this first-hand account of the 19th-century Russian aristocracy, written during a time of political instability by the highest-ranking British Lady in Russia.Charlotte Anne Albinia Disbrowe (1795-1855) lived in Russia from 1825 to 1828 after her husband Edward Cromwell Disbrowe (1790-1851) had been appointed Minister Plenipotentiary at the court of Tsar Alexander I. Their post was unexpectedly extended because of the death of Tsar Alexander, the Decembrist revolt, and the coronation of Nicholas I. Disbrowe's account is praised for its observation "of the practical effects rather than the political causes of the uprising that followed" (Robinson), to the extent that Tsar Alexander's death is mentioned in a postscript: "P.S. - Little did I think to add such a p.s (...) The Emperor is dead". Her daughter Charlotte collected and published her mother's letters in this work and later in Old Days in Diplomacy: Recollections of a Closed Century (1903).

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