She came from a farming family, something which had a lasting influence on her writing, as you will see, but worked as a history teacher before she turned to writing full time.

Alison Weir has been plugging away at it, and, brilliantly, was instrumental in getting some Lofts books back into print, while the availability of ebooks and the possibility of finding out-of-print books on ABE or Amazon means that there’s never been a better time to discover her. Lofts is a deeply unfashionable writer who people in the know keep saying should be rediscovered. And the reader will likely want this information, for Lofts makes our stay in Hortense’s company a congenial one.I had a massive Norah Lofts binge over Christmas. As the book doesn’t have an afterword–I suppose they weren’t in style at the time–the reader wanting more information has to go elsewhere.

Artistically, it works, but it would have been good to see what Hortense made of her later life. My only real disappointment with the book was its ending. Nonetheless, Lofts is good at evoking the emotions caused by these events, as when Hortense, urging Napoleon to flee following his return from Waterloo, gets this succinct reply: “My dear, it no longer matters.” This isn’t an action-packed novel the big events, of course, occur mostly out of Hortense’s range of vision. Josephine is particularly well done, and there are some nice sketches of life among the Bonapartes, one of the highlights being a particularly fractious family dinner that ends with Hortense’s baby son peeing on the tablecloth.

Lofts does a good job with the other characters as well. She can laugh at herself, and she has a rare gift for facing facts. As the narrator, she frankly admits that she lacks her mother’s easy charm, and she can be stubborn, especially when her estranged husband, Louis, is concerned. Hortense is an appealing heroine, resilient, un-self-pitying, and resourceful without ever becoming that dreaded creature of historical fiction, the Mary Sue. It has one of the most jaw-breaking subtitles I’ve seen in modern fiction: “The Very Private Life of Hortense, Stepdaughter of Napoleon I, mother of Napoleon III.” trilogy.Ī Rose for Virtue (named for a school prize that gets destroyed inadvertently when Hortense wears it) follows Hortense from the time of her mother and stepfather’s marriage to Hortense’s departure from Paris following Napoleon’s final downfall. I’ve been rather interested in Josephine and her circle ever since I read Sandra Gulland’s Josephine B. I hadn’t heard of this novel before, so I was delighted to pick it up and find that it was about Hortense, daughter of Josephine Bonaparte and stepdaughter (and sister-in-law) to Napoleon. Over the New Year’s weekend, I went into a used bookstore on the coast and spotted A Rose for Virtue, a 1971 historical novel by Norah Lofts, waiting patiently on the shelf.

The House at Sunset by Norah Lofts