Maharanis Tale Of Four Indian Queens India by ISHVARA - eBay Historical Figures, Biographies, Nonfiction Books, Books. (end time 02-Jan-10 13:54:18 AEDST)


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Item specifics - Non-Fiction Books

Format:	Hardcover	Publication Year:	2004
Subject:	Biography & Memoir	Special Attributes:	--
	Royalty	Language:	English
	--	Condition:	New

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Product Details

Condition: Brand New

ISBN: 0670033685

Publisher: Viking Penguin Books USA

Publication Year: 2004

Edition: Hard Cover

Pages: 351

Book size: 24 cm X 16 cm

This book exceeds 500 grams in weight and therefore express postage Auswide is $11 If outside Australia please email for a quote

Description

A maharani is the wife of a maharaja (king), and through the lives of four such Indian queens, in two linked families over three generations, Moore demonstrates the changing currents of Indian politics and customs. The story starts with Chimnabai, the first queen to break purdah, in 1913, and ends with her granddaughter Gayatri Devi. Devi was the third wife of the maharaja of Jaipur, but after Independence stripped the princes of most of their power she ran successfully for Parliament. She was also a socialite—Jackie Kennedy was a friend—and the book is generally as concerned with parties and polo matches as with politics. The changes of the twentieth century seem to have been easier on the women than on their husbands and sons. With only a few exceptions (including Devi's husband, who had a heart attack during a polo match), the men died young, from complications of severe alcoholism.

In Maharnis Lucy Moore brilliantly recreates the lives of four princesses - two grandmothers, a mother and a daughter - of the Royal courts of India. Their extraordinary story takes in tiger hunts, exotic palaces and lavish ceremonies in India, as well as the glamorous international scene of the Edwardian and interwar era. It is also an intimate portrait of four remarkable women - Chimnabai, Sunity, Indira and Ayesha - who changed the world they lived in. Through their lives Lucy Moore tells the history of a nation during an era of great change: the rise and fall of the Raj from the Indian Mutiny to Independence and beyond.

Reviews

Drawing on accounts from the waning days of the Raj and the British Empire to the present, Moore (The Thieves' Opera) brings exhaustive research to bear on the stories of four Indian queens who used their power to help forge social change. Her fly-on-the-wall approach gives their triumphs and struggles immediacy. Refined Chimnabai began her marriage to the maharaja of the northern city of Baroda in purdah, which kept married women hidden from men other than their husbands, but after breaking purdah in 1913, she became a champion of women's rights. Sunity Devi, maharani of Cooch Behar (near what is now Bangladesh), forged a close friendship with Queen Victoria and wrote books on India's history for British audiences. Chimnabai's gorgeous daughter, Indira, rejected her arranged alliance in order to marry Sunity's son, and later ruled in her late husband's place as regent of state. Indira's daughter Ayesha defied her parents' wishes so she could become the third wife of the man she loved and was elected to India's parliament in a 1962 landslide. Today, she breeds polo ponies, works on conservationist campaigns and serves on the boards of schools she founded. "In their different ways," Moore writes, "they were icons, modernizers and revolutionaries... inspiring a redefinition of the role of women in modern India." The book's rich details make up for its sometimes stiff prose, as Moore explores everything from the women's elaborate fashions—silk chiffon saris, magnificent jewels and spangled veils—to the politics and strict traditions of India's aristocracy.
Reviewer: Publishers Weekly

A maharani is the wife of a maharaja, and through the lives of four such Indian queens, in two linked families over three generations, Moore demonstrates the changing currents of Indian politics and customs. The story starts with Chimnabai, the first queen to break purdah, in 1913, and ends with her granddaughter Gayatri Devi. Devi was the third wife of the maharaja of Jaipur, but after Independence stripped the princes of most of their power she ran successfully for Parliament. She was also a socialite—Jackie Kennedy was a friend—and the book is generally as concerned with parties and polo matches as with politics. The changes of the twentieth century seem to have been easier on the women than on their husbands and sons. With only a few exceptions (including Devi's husband, who had a heart attack during a polo match), the men died young, from complications of severe alcoholism.
Reviewer: The New Yorker

About Author

Lucy Moore was born in 1970 and educated in Britain and the United States before reading history at Edinburgh University.

She is the editor of Con Men and Cutpurses: Scenes from the Hogarthian Underworld, as well as the critically acclaimed The Thieves Opera: The Remarkable Lives and Deaths of Jonathan Wild, Thief-Taker, and Jack Sheppard, House-Breaker (Viking 1996), Amphibious Thing: The Life of a Georgian Rake (Viking 2000) and Maharanis: The Lives and Times of Three Generations of Indian Princesses (Viking 2004). Maharanis has been reprinted six times, was an Evening Standard bestseller, and the top selling non-fiction title in W H Smith on paperback publication in summer 2005.

Lucy is a regular book reviewer for The Observer and The Sunday Times. In April 2001, she was voted one of the 'top twenty young writers in Britain' by the Independent on Sunday and in the 'Writers' section of the New Statesman's "Best of Young British" issue.

Television presenter work includes "Nelson" for Great Britons (BBC) and "Kings in Waiting : Edward VII" (BBC) plus a number of talking head appearances (most recently for Invitation to a Hanging).

Source for the above information: Wikipedia

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