Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #350018 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 132 pages

Synopsis
Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne (Comtesse de Lafayette) (1634-1693) was a French writer. She was born in Paris to a family of minor but rich nobility. In 1655, de La Vergne married Francois Motier, Comte de Lafayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, Lafayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. Her most famous novel was La Princesse de Cleves, France's first historical novel, first published anonymously in 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be a prototype of the early psychological novel.

Customer Reviews

Like a 16th Century version of "Paris Match"!
My husband bought this for me for my birthday - I wanted to read it after hearing Nicolas Sarkozy complaining about its use in Civil Service entry exams in France.

It was an interesting read. It is obviously a very early novel, possibly the first ever historical novel, and the characters are largely based on real people, excluding the eponymous heroine. She is stranded in a world she is little prepared for and her first experiences of love, marital, courtly, are far from positive. The court gossip and the 3 courts (that of the King, the Queen and the wife of the Dauphin) and their petty rivalries are fascinating...just like reading "Paris Match" or "Hello"!

I really enjoyed it for what it was - a chance to read an outstanding novel whose subject is timeless. For the amateur historian and francophile alike. It's a very short read (only 129 pages), and well worth it.