The new book by well-known writer and historian Olga Eliseeva is devoted to the everyday life of Russian nobility in the Golden Age of Catherine II.
Describing the routines of prominent people and old-style landowners, even the Empress herself and traveling visitors, the author tried to show not only their handkerchiefs, candles, and filthy wheels of road carriages, but also how our ancestors breathed, what they felt, whom they loved, and whom they hated—in that glorious time that is already long gone, yet still so alluring.
For this kind of task, there is no better way than to let the reader touch the genuine documents of the era. That’s why such an important place in the book is given to texts created two centuries ago: memoirs, correspondence, political pamphlets, reports, and so on.