by Stephanie Dray | Apr 24, 2021 | Adrienne Lafayette, America's First Daughter, Bloopers, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
Here’s one for the blooper file. As I understand it, the chocolate we know it today was not invented until 1847. Until then, chocolate was known and enjoyed as a drink. So why, then, do edible chocolates appear at the end of the 18th century in both...
by Stephanie Dray | Mar 30, 2021 | Adrienne Lafayette, Food, Fun Stuff, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
My fabulously talented friend Max Miller and I were talking about his popular food show, “Tasting History” when I suggested that he do an episode featuring some food from Lafayette’s day. I provided him with a wedding menu that was posted to the wall...
by Stephanie Dray | Mar 23, 2021 | Excerpts, For Readers, Marthe, My Works, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
Of the three women you’ll meet in The Women of Chateau Lafayette, Marthe Simone is the only fictional composite character. She was inspired by many actual women living at the chateau before and during World War II. How and why I decided to fictionalize Marthe...
by Stephanie Dray | Mar 15, 2021 | Adrienne Lafayette, Articles, Beatrice Chanler, Research, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
The Marquis de Lafayette was not only instrumental in helping the United States to win independence; his memory also played a role in America embracing her destiny as a world power. On July 4, 1917, General Pershing and his staff visited Lafayette’s tomb at...
by Stephanie Dray | Oct 5, 2020 | Beatrice Chanler, Heroines, My Works, News, Research, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
While writing The Women of Chateau Lafayette, the research kept shifting under my feet, in part due to what I discovered in Beatrice’s private letters, provided to me by her grandson William A. Chanler, partly due to what I found in her papers at the New York...
by Stephanie Dray | Oct 5, 2020 | Beatrice Chanler, For Readers, My Works, News, Research, The Women of Chateau Lafayette
Those of you who have read The Women of Chateau Lafayette will know why I’m so interested in the world of the stage of the late 19th and early 20th century. For everyone else it will be a spoiler, so let me just say that a fabulous reader who has requested to...