The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV. By Anne Somerset. (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 2004. Pp. xxii, 377. $27.95.)
Students and scholars of the Ancient Regime in France will welcome this thorough examination of the "Affair of the Poisons," a pivotal event in the reign of Louis XIV, with important ramifications on morals and behavior in seventeenth-century courtly society. Lady Anne Somerset has ably assembled a ...