Katherine Watt was a stressed out, burned out Silicon Valley executive tired of making corporate decisions, traveling the globe to meet with bureaucratic bodies in Malaysia, China, Singapore, India, Australia and points beyond. She was ready to leave all that behind and to create a new life; a second chapter. She heard the ghosts of the City of Light calling to her and moved to her perfect little apartment in Montmartre where her only decision each morning was where to write today. Armed with her old high school French and level 72 Duolingo skills she jumped into the deep end of the pool. In her efforts to design a new Parisian life she found Ninon.Beautiful Ninon de L'Enclos was life coach to the who's who of the 17th Century, covering Literature, Art, Politics to matters of the erotic. Add to her curriculum vitae courtesan, writer, and hostess to the most sought after Salon of the day where any afternoon one might find Moliere doing a reading of his newest play, de La Fontaine sharing a Fable or watch Ninon artfully fend off the advances of Cardinal Robespierre.Across the centuries Ninon's spirit helps Ms. Watt find a self she didn't know she could be.

The memoirs of Hortense (1646–1699) and of Marie (1639–1715) Mancini, nieces of the powerful Cardinal Mazarin and members of the court of Louis XIV, represent the earliest examples in France of memoirs published by women under their own names during their lifetimes. Both unhappily married—Marie had also fled the aftermath of her failed affair with the king—the sisters chose to leave their husbands for life on the road, a life quite rare for women of their day. Through their writings, the Mancinis sought to rehabilitate their reputations and reclaim the right to define their public images themselves, rather than leave the stories of their lives to the intrigues of the court—and to their disgruntled ex-husbands. First translated in 1676 and 1678 and credited largely to male redactors, the two memoirs reemerge here in an accessible English translation that chronicles the beginnings of women’s rights to personal independence within the confines of an otherwise circumscribed early modern aristocratic society.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.