Further Reading Author of the critically acclaimed national best-selling novels AHAB'S WIFE and FOUR SPIRITS, Sena Jeter Naslund offers an insight into the background research for her most recent book ABUNDANCE: A NOVEL OF MARIE ANTOINETTE.  In ABUNDANCE, Naslund boldly imagines the inner life of Marie Antoinette and movingly portrays Antoinette's courageous response to imprisonment and the fury of the French Revolution. Based on extensive research, Naslund's annotated book list is drawn from works she kept by her side and frequently consulted as she wrote her novel.   Winner of the Harper Lee Award and the Southeastern Library Association fiction award, Naslund can be tracked on her book tour appearances here. 1.  Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser (2001) This authoritative revisionist biography of the maligned and misrepresented Queen of France debunks the idea that Marie Antoinette ever said, "Let them eat cake." Scrupulous in its presentation of evidence concerning such topics as Antoinette's sexual relationship to her husband and her attachment to Count Axel von Fersen of Sweden, Fraser also explores Antoinette's relationship to her mother, to her women friends, and to her children, while providing the needed political and social context.  This sympathetic ground-breaking biography is an acknowledged major source for both Naslund's novel ABUNDANCE and Coppola's film "Marie Antoinette."   2. Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama (1989) A wonderfully insightful account of the causes and nature of the French revolution, CITIZENS includes topics as diverse as pioneering hot air balloon ascents from the courtyard at Versailles,  the paintings of Elisabeth Vigee LeBrun, Voltaire's role in the enlightenment, and Rousseau's contribution to the ethos of sensibility. The story of the revolutionists' execution by guillotine of the family of the elderly statesman Malesherbes is heart-breaking. 3. Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman by Stefan Zweig, translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (1933) This highly influential biography, translated from German into English in the 1930s, contributed to the image of Marie Antoinette as feather-brained, self-centered, and materialistic.  Nonetheless, Zweig admires the courage with which she met her fate at the guillotine and briefly rose above her second-rate nature as an "average woman."  Fraser's biography provides a needed corrective to Zweig's attitude toward women as well as to some of his scholarship. 4.  Marie-Antoinette: A Portrait by Ian Dunlap (1993) This fascinating narrative of the queen and her husband Louis XVI is almost entirely composed of quotations about the royal pair from their contemporaries' letters and journals.  The quotes are skillfully woven together and are unusually interesting, especially when the various observers appear to disagree.  Dunlap also takes time to describe rather fully various chateaux, which other biographers are content merely to name. 5.  The Eighteenth-Century Woman by Olivier Bernier (1982) In a series of brief but witty and detailed essays, Bernier summarizes the lives of important women of the time from various walks of life, including Marie Antoinette's beloved sister Charlotte, Queen of Naples, Madame du Barry, the last mistress of Louis XV, Marie Antoinette's dress-maker Rose Bertin, and Marie Antoinette's portraitist Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun. The well-written text is augmented by copious period illustrations.   6.  Secrets of Marie Antoinette by Olivier Bernier (1985) Bernier presents English translations of actual letters exchanged between Marie Antoinette and her mother Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria, along with letters to the Empress from Count Mercy, the Austrian Ambassador to France who secretly reported many details about Marie Antoinette's life at court.  Bernier provides a historical context for the letters and helpful footnotes identifying when the letter-writer was lying or misrepresenting the actual state of things. 7.  Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun: The Odyssey of an Artist in an Age of Revolution by Gita May (2005) A scholarly biography of a woman of beauty and charm who made her way into the courts of Europe by her talent, this portrait of the artist draws on the painter's own memoir but also on all previous treatments of her and her work. While Vigee Le Brun became the friend of Marie Antoinette as well as of other high-born patrons in Italy , Austria , Russia , and Germany after her escape from the French Revolution, it is her determined dedication to her art that makes her an admirable figure.  8.  Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman (1998) An Englishwoman of extraordinary charm, the subject of this biography, like her friend Marie Antoinette, had a cold husband and diverted herself with parties and fashion.  When the Duchess visited at Versailles , she and the queen shared a mania for high stakes gambling.   9.  A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859) Charles Dickens' classic novel of London and Paris during the French Revolution still conjures up the tyranny of The Terror and how former victims of injustice can later become perpetrators of their own ghoulish disregard for human life.  While his women characters are represented by the extremes of the saintly Lucy and the demonic Madame Defarge, Dickens's grim portrayal of a time when the forces of government practiced unlawful imprisonment and arbitrary execution sounds an errie warning for our own times. 10.  Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos (1782) translated by Douglas Parmee One of the most readable today of the French eighteenth-century novels and the basis for a popular contemporary film, Laclos depicts sexual predation as the amusement of the decadent and bored courtier Valmont.  Told through a series of letters, a standard convention of novels of this era, Laclos deftly uses suspense, desire, and pain to compel the reader's attention.  A copy of this novel occupied a place in the library of Marie Antoinette.