Other editions of book The Youngest Lady in Waiting

This is not a Print-on-Demand or facsimile book. First American Edition 1971. It is a hardcover book with purple boards and dust jacket. The price on the dust jacket flap is $4.95. It was published by John Day Company, 257 Park Ave., New York 10010. LOCCN (Library of Congress Call Number) 70-155009. As lady-in-waiting to the Grand Duchess in the Romanov Court, a young girl finds her loyalties divided during the uprising of December 1825. The author penned a number of children's novels, many of them works of historical fiction set in Russia or Yugoslavia, Mara Kay was of Russian extraction, was brought up in Yugoslavia, but has lived in America since 1950. From Kirkus Review: Latter-day ladies' fare watered down for those girls who are simply dying to know what befell Masha (1968). Graduating in 1824 from the Smolni Institute in St. Petersberg, that orphan of 18 whose only friends are gay Sophie Brozin and the birch tree outside her dormitory window embarks on a new life as the youngest member of the suite of the gracious Grand Duchess Alexandra. Before the story ends the Grand Duchess will become the Empress and Masha will find her allegiance to the royal family challenged by her fiance Sergei who belongs to the Freedom Society dubbed the Decembrists by history. He is killed during the abortive revolution with whose ideals Masha sympathizes abstractly while deploring its tactics, and just after she has told him so; Sophie's husband Mark survives the violence sparked by the ascension of Grand Duke Nicholas to the throne, but he is sentenced to twenty years' hard labor in Siberia for his treasonous participation. Sophie follows him and Masha visits her with Michael, Sergei's brother, to whom she's now happily married: they live in the country near Pushkin who is but one of the (not very) real people tapped for window-dressing. . . . It's a chintzy romance a la russe, guaranteed to wet the eyes and dry up the mind.