Frances Mossiker was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1906. She published her first book in 1961, at the age of 55, and became a worldwide bestseller of historical works, both nonfiction and fiction; so successful that she is one of the few non-French writers whose works on France became popular enough to receive multiple awards in France, which does not generally happen. She was very famous for the depth of her research, and her penchant for letting the evidence speak for itself. In 1965 she published Napoleon and Josephine: Biography of a Marriage, which is, as the subtitle says, an experiment in writing a biography not about a person so much as about a marriage, and it will be the next fortnightly book.
This book comes to me from my grandmother; it actually has the bookplate of my great-great-aunt, who lived in Dallas and seems to have had a particular interest in Dallas authors like Mossiker.
