- As the era of books online is dawning, a luxury edition reprint
of a biography of a woman who has been dead for more than 200
years may seem curious.
KU history professor John T. "Jay" Alexander, author
of the award-winning book Catherine the Great: Life and Legend,
suggests a luxury edition is more fitting than curious.
Originally published by Oxford University Press, Catherine the
Great: Life and Legend has been reprinted by the Folio Society
of Great Britain in a luxury edition.
Alexander's book was a History Book Club and a Book of the Month
Club selection in 1988. The first edition also received the Byron
Caldwell Smith award for best book by a Kansas author in 1988.
KU's Hall Center for the Humanities sponsors the award.
Oxford's edition of Alexander's book on Catherine sold for under
$25. Folio's boxed, embossed Jacquard cloth-bound edition with
large print, color illustrations and sturdy pages of Balmoral
Laid paper sells for under $50.
Catherine is a woman of mystery even today, Alexander says. As
a historian, Alexander said he became fascinated with what Catherine
did and how she did it. "She did a lot to put Russia on
the map," Alexander says.
He describes her as a highly skilled politician, who overthrew
her husband to become empress of Russia despite her German heritage.
Within days of Catherine taking the throne, her husband, Peter
III, was murdered. Aware she would be blamed for her husband's
murder, Catherine worked to counter negative publicity.
"Nobody reacts neutrally to her. You are infatuated and
intrigued by her charm immediately, or dismayed and disgusted
by her supposed hypocrisy, vanity, conceit, brazen ambition,
manipulation and exploitation of others," Alexander writes
in the new introduction for the luxury edition.
Alexander is under contract with Oxford University Press for
a new book about all the Russian empresses and their courts in
the 18th century, including Catherine I (1725-27), Anna Ivanovna
(1730-40), regent Anna Leopoldovna (1740-41), Elizabeth (1741-61)
and Catherine II (1762-96).
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