Zoé Oldenbourg (Russian:Зоя Сергеевна Ольденбург,romanized: Zoya Sergeyevna Oldenburg; 31 March 1916[1] – 8 November 2002)[2] was a Russian-born French popular historian and novelist who specialized inmedieval French history, in particular theCrusades andCathars.
She was born inPetrograd, Russia into a family of scholars and historians. Her fatherSergei was a journalist and historian, her mother Ada Starynkevich was a mathematician, and her grandfatherSergei was the permanent secretary of theRussian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.[3] Her early childhood was spent among the privations of theRussian revolutionary period and the first years ofcommunism. Her father fled the country and established himself as a journalist in Paris.
With her family, she emigrated to Paris in 1925 at the age of nine and graduated from theLycée Molière [fr] in 1934 with herBaccalauréat diploma. She went on to study at theSorbonne and then she studied painting at theAcadémie Ranson. In 1938 she spent a year in England[4] and studied theology. DuringWorld War II she supported herself by hand-painting scarves.
She was encouraged by her father to write and she completed her first work, a novel,Argile et cendres in 1946. Although she wrote her first works in Russian, as an adult she wrote almost exclusively in French.[5]
She married Heinric Idalovici in 1948[6] and had two children, Olaf and Marie-Agathe.[7]
She combined a high level of scholarship with a deep feeling for theMiddle Ages in her historical novels. Her first novel,The World is Not Enough, offered a panoramic view of the twelfth century. Her second,The Cornerstone, was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in America. Other works includeThe Awakened,The Chains of Love,Massacre at Montsegur,Destiny of Fire,Cities of the Flesh, andCatherine the Great, a Literary Guild selection. InThe Crusades, Zoe Oldenbourg returned to writing about the Middle Ages.[8]
Argile et cendres (1946), published in English asThe World is Not Enough (translated by Willard A. Trask).
La Pierre angulaire (1953), published in English asThe Corner-stone (translated byEdward Hyams).
Réveillés de la vie (1956), published in English asThe Awakened (translated byEdward Hyams).
Les Irréductibles (1958), published in English asThe Chains of Love (translated byMichael Bullock).
Les Brûlés (1960), published in English asDestiny of Fire (translated byPeter Green).
Les Cités charnelles, ou L'Histoire de Roger de Montbrun (1961), published in English asCities of the Flesh, or The Story of Roger de Montbrun (translated by Anne Carter).
Catherine de Russie (1966), published in English asCatherine the Great (translated by Anne Carter).
La Joie des pauvres (1970), published in English asThe Heirs of the Kingdom (translated by Anne Carter).
Le Bûcher de Montségur, 16 mars 1244 (1959), published in English asMassacre at Montségur: A History of theAlbigensian Crusade (translated byPeter Green).
Les Croisades (1965), published in English asThe Crusades (translated by Anne Carter).
Saint Bernard (1970), includes a selection of texts on Saint Bernard by Abélard, Pierre le Vénérable, Geoffroi de Clairvaux, Bérenger de Poitiers and Bossuet.
L'Épopée des cathédrales (1972).
Que vous a donc fait Israël ? (1974).
Visages d'un autoportrait (1977), autobiography.
Que nous est Hécube ?, ou Un plaidoyer pour l'humain (1984).
^Encyclopedia of World Literature in the Twentieth Century: O to Z, Volume 3 (F. Ungar, 1971:ISBN0-8044-3094-2), p. 11.
^Histoires littéraires: Revue trimestrielle consacrée à la littérature française des XIXème et XXème siècles 4/13-14 (2003): 124.
^Christiane P. Makward and Madeleine Cottenet-Hage,Dictionnaire littéraire des femmes de langue française (KARTHALA Editions, 1996:ISBN2-86537-676-1), p. 448.
Steinberg, Theodore L., "The Use and Abuse of Medieval History: Four Contemporary Novelists and the First Crusade",Studies in Medievalism, II.1 (Fall 1982), pp. 77–93.
