Mary King Waddington was the American daughter of Charles King, ninth president of Columbia University, and the granddaughter of New York Senator Rufus King. She moved to France with her parents in 1871, and three years later married William Waddington, French diplomat and statesman. After Waddington’s death in 1894, Mary published two volumes of memoirs of life as a diplomat’s wife. In 1909 she followed up with Chateau and Country Life in France, which describes her later life in the French countryside. Its chapters tell of chateaux visits, holidays and festivals, and country customs, and are a mix of more formal memoir pieces and sections that read like diary entries or chatty letters to American friends. - Summary by Colleen McMahon