Margaret’s Blog

For three months I’ve neglected this blog while I concentrated on my novel, usually working on it eight to twelve hours a day. Now the story is complete start to finish, and has been through several drafts. I’m in the process of getting critiques from my writing group and other expert readers. Earlier this spring, […]

In March of last year, I was in Paris and Corsica, gathering inspiration at Napoleonic sites. In May, my St Helena trip rounded out my first-hand impressions of Napoleon from youth to dying exile. Now, as I near completion of a draft of my novel, I reflect on what depth those experiences have lent to […]

The Encyclopedia Britannica has announced that the 2010 publication is its last print edition.  First published in 1768, the year before Napoleon Bonaparte’s birth, this venerable reference source is going totally digital. Although I love hard-copy books, the announcement wouldn’t normally bother me. After all, the internet is a practical way to keep information up-to-date […]

Today, I visited the “Royalists to Romantics” exhibit at the National Museum of the Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. The collection of seventy paintings on loan from the Louvre, Versailles, and other French museums were all produced by women between 1750 and 1850, a time when women artists were marginalized. One of the […]

The French don’t have a national museum devoted to Napoleon, but French politician Yves Jégo is proposing to build “Napoleonland,” a theme park based on the legacy of Napoleon and the First Empire. The chosen site is near Disneyland Paris, on the grounds of the 1814 Battle of Montereau, a Napoleonic victory over the Austrians […]

In exile on St Helena, Napoleon regretted not enriching Corsica when, as French emperor, he easily could have. Having developed an idyllic memory of his youth, he dictated to his secretary Las Cases that, “the Bonaparte family had retired [from Corsica] to Nice [in mainland France].” Napoleon’s last visit to Corsica was a quick stopover […]

This fall, The Delmarva Review published my short story, “Mrs. Morrisette.” Now, they’ve nominated it for inclusion in the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology. According to the Pushcart website, “The Pushcart Prize – Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America.” Next April, I’ll find […]

Young Napoleon, growing up in a household in which his mother seemed always to be pregnant, sought out solitary refuges. One was a wooden lean-to on the family porch, another was a grotto on the outskirts of Ajaccio. Legend says he was hiding in this second spot, when his father and the Count de Marbeuf […]

“Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable.  When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me.”  Napoleon Bonaparte (from Napoleon: In His Own Words, 1916, edited by Jules Bertaut) These words, attributed to Napoleon, reflect the […]

In 1778, nine-year-old Napoleon left Ajaccio, Corsica to attend French military academy. In France, his fellow students mocked his foreign accent and chip-on-the-shoulder Corsican patriotism.  Eight years later, when he returned home for the first time, the locals thought him “Frenchified.” He struggled to relearn his childhood language and sought out old friends and places, […]