List of illustrations Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Note on dates, quotations and transliteration Introduction: Catherine the Great, letter-writing and the elite Enlightenment The letters of Catherine the Great The elite Enlightenment of Catherine the Great Chapter 1: Catherine the epistolarian Catherine's epistolary education: 1742-1762 Catherine's début: 1762-1774 In transition: 1774-1781 Mastery: 1781-1789 An Enlightenment monarch in a Revolutionary world: 1789-1796 Catherine's epistolary geography Catherine and her contemporaries Chapter 2: Catherine the Great and eighteenth-century epistolary style L ettres galantes L ettres familières Portrait and narrative letters Love letters Chapter 3: Fashioning the great Enlightenment monarch Gender and epistolary self-fashioning Catherine's image as an Enlightenment intellectual Fashioning greatness The correct exercise of military might Compensating for military heroism: flourishing provinces Patronage of the arts and sciences Ethical greatness The legislator Chapter 4: The play of authority in epistolary form Authority and linguistic mastery Authority and writing practices Epistolary etiquette Paper use Datelines Salutations Closers Foregoing etiquette Affection-seeking formulae Postscripts Signatures, addresses and attachments Chapter 5: Epistolary publicity and the audience for Catherine's correspondences The injunction against publication Building reputation through networks of epistolary sociability Managing celebrity through epistolary circulation From reputation to glory: writing for posterity by addressing gens de mérite Chapter 6: Greatness contested: Catherine's epistolary response to the French Revolution Chronology of Catherine's epistolary actions against the French Revolution Old and new in Catherine's epistolary style Greatness contested: confronting the past Conclusion: new readers and new ways of reading Catherine's letters Bibliography of works cited Archival sources Editions of Catherine's letters Secondary sources: English Secondary sources: French Secondary sources: Russian Secondary sources: German Secondary sources: Italian Index.