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The Pilgrim Princess: a life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky
Maria Fairweather

The Pilgrim Princess: a life of Princess Zinaida Volkonsky

This biography brings to life, through its subject's vibrant personality, a romantic period of enduring fascination.

Princess Zinaida Volkonsky was a member of one of Russia's oldest families, became a maid of honour to the Dowager Empress and at court was soon noticed by Tsar Alexander I whose mistress she became and with whom she maintained a deep and lifelong friendship.

Married to one of the Tsar's aides-de-camp, she travelled across Europe during the German and French campaigns, when she met Goethe. In the 1820s as the hostess of one of the most influential literary and musical salons in Moscow, where Alexander Pushkin was a leading guest, Zinaida became the glamorous hostess who later inspired Tolstoy.
Zinaida inherited a strong tendency to depression. A lifelong search for spiritual answers eventually brought her to the Roman Catholic church and to a new life in Rome. Here, she at first created another salon, entertaining among many Stendhal, Rossini, Donizetti, Glinka and Sir Walter Scott. It was in her garden that Nikolai Gogol, worked on part of his great novel, Dead Souls.

Book Details:

  • Author: Maria Fairweather
  • Published Year: 1999
  • Rights Sold
    • Constable: 1999
    • US: Carroll & Graf
Maria Fairweather

Maria Fairweather

Born in Tehran in 1943 of  mixed   Greek and Russian parentage, Maria Fairweather was educated in England, taking joint First class  honours in Russian and History at UCL SSEES as a mature student. Marrying early into the Diplomatic Service and embarking on a peripatetic life, she made use of her prodigious linguistic talents by becoming an interpreter at the European  Commission- translating from French, Italian , Greek and Russian into English. She also worked for Mrs Thatcher and other  British ministers.   En poste in Rome in the 1990s and resident a...
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Book Reviews

  • "Vibrant and passionately human."
    Times Literary Supplement
  • "Maria Fairweather’s first book brings the Princess gracefully to life….a lightness of touch that should be the envy of many professional historians."
    John Patten, Country Life.
  • "This enthralling historical biography…..brings to life one of the most cataclysmic eras of European history."
    Shusha Guppy, The Independent
  • "Maria Fairweather writes with a fluency and charm worthy of her subject."
    Idem.
  • "Maria Fairweather became fascinated by her illustrious predecessor at the villa and this graceful , evocative biography is the result."
    Linda Kelly, Literary Review.