Memoirs of Count Grammont is a sparkling, satirical portrait of one of the most dazzling figures of seventeenth-century Europe, framed by the life and character of Anthony Hamilton, its brilliant author. Born into an Irish-Scottish Catholic family exiled by civil turmoil, Hamilton grew up amid hardship in France, served Louis XIV and later James II, and finally returned to France after the collapse of the Jacobite cause, where he lived among displaced courtiers, poets, and elegant companions. Out of that world of exile, wit, and refined conversation, he forged fiction of rare grace, sweeping aside the era's inflated tales with lighter, more polished works. The memoirs themselves celebrate the Chevalier de Grammont, whose wit, composure, daring, and appetite for pleasure made him unforgettable in war, love, and gaming. Hamilton draws on intimate knowledge of court life to render the corrupt brilliance of Charles II's court and the social world of early modern France with vivid detail and sly humor. Rich in anecdote, bons mots, and graceful observation, the book is both a lively historical portrait and a masterpiece of worldly comedy. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.