author

Mrs. (Catherine Mary Charlton) Bearne

d. 1923

Best known for lively historical biographies of French queens and society women, this early-20th-century writer brought court life, revolution, and royal intrigue to a broad readership. Her books have a clear fascination with the women who shaped French history from behind the scenes and at its center.

2 Audiobooks

Pictures of the old French court : $b Jeanne de Bourbon, Isabeau de Bavière, Anne de Bretagne

Pictures of the old French court : $b Jeanne de Bourbon, Isabeau de Bavière, Anne de Bretagne

by Mrs. (Catherine Mary Charlton) Bearne

Heroines of French Society in the Court, the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration

Heroines of French Society in the Court, the Revolution, the Empire and the Restoration

by Mrs. (Catherine Mary Charlton) Bearne

About the author

Catherine Mary Charlton Bearne was a British author whose books focused on French royal and social history. Records available through Project Gutenberg, the Collective Biographies of Women database, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive show her publishing from the late 1890s into the 1910s, with her death recorded in 1923.

Her known works include Lives and Times of the Early Valois Queens (1898), Pictures of the Old French Court (1900), Heroines of French Society (1906/1907), A Royal Quartette (1908), Four Fascinating Frenchwomen (1910), and A Court Painter and His Circle: François Boucher (1913). Across these books, she returned again and again to French queens, noblewomen, and cultural figures, writing accessible narrative history rather than academic scholarship.

Although not much biographical detail about her life is easy to confirm from major public sources, her surviving bibliography gives a clear sense of her interests: strong women, court politics, and the drama of French history. For readers of older historical nonfiction, her work offers a period voice and an enduring curiosity about the lives of remarkable women.