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Madame de La Fayette

Born

in Paris, France

March 18, 1634

Died

May 25, 1693

Genre

Fiction

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Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette

Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen y Marie Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, comtesse de la Fayette

Christened Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne, she was born in Paris to a family of minor but wealthy nobility. At 16, de la Vergne became the maid of honor to Queen Anne of Austria and began also to acquire a literary education from Gilles Ménage, who gave her lessons in Italian and Latin. Ménage would lead her to join the fashionable salons of Madame de Rambouillet and Madeleine de Scudéry. Her father, Marc Pioche de la Vergne, had died a year before, and the same year her mother married Renaud de Sévigné, uncle of Madame de Sévigné, who would remain her lifelong intimate friend.
In 1655, de la Vergne married François Motier, comte de La Fayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. She accompanied him to country estates in Auvergne and Bourbonnais although she made frequent trips back to Paris, where she began to mix with court society and formed her own successful salon. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans, who asked La Fayette to write her biography; Antoine Arnauld; and the leading French writers Segrais and Huet. Earlier on, during the Fronde, La Fayette had also befriended the Cardinal de Retz.
Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, La Fayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. From 1665 onwards she formed a close relationship with François de La Rochefoucauld, author of Maximes, who introduced her to many literary luminaries of the time, including Racine and Boileau. 1669 saw the publication of the first volume of Zaïde, a Hispano-Moorish romance which was signed by Segrais but is almost certainly attributable to La Fayette. The second volume appeared in 1671. The title ran through reprints and translations mostly thanks to the preface Huet had offered.

Marie de LaFayette's La Princesse de Clèves (1678)

La Fayette's most famous novel was La Princesse de Clèves, first published anonymously in March 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be the first true French novel and a prototype of the early psychological novel.
The death of La Rochefoucauld in 1680 and her husband in 1683 led La Fayette to lead a less active social life in her later years. Three works were published posthumously: La Comtesse de Tende (1718), Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre (1720), and Memoires de la Cour de France (1731). ...more

Combine Editions
Madame de La Fayette’s books

Average rating: 3.33 · 22,730 ratings · 1,501 reviews · 235 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Princesse de Clèves 3.35 avg rating — 18,836 ratings — published 1678 — 345 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Princesse de Montpensier 3.12 avg rating — 2,328 ratings — published 1662 — 68 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Princesse de Clèves et autres romans by Madame de La Fayette, Bernard Pingaud (contributor) 3.33 avg rating — 307 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Princesse de Montpensier / La Comtesse de Tende 3.29 avg rating — 246 ratings — published 1662 — 10 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Histoire de la princesse de Montpensier et autres nouvelles 3.47 avg rating — 230 ratings — published 1662 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Princesse de Cleves, Vol 1 of 2 3.21 avg rating — 156 ratings — published 2010 — 21 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	La Comtesse de Tende 3.21 avg rating — 120 ratings — published 2014 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Zaide: Histoire Espagnole 3.55 avg rating — 80 ratings — 24 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Princesse de Clèves: The Princesse de Montpensier, the Comtesse de Tende by Madame de La Fayette, Terence Cave 3.80 avg rating — 41 ratings — published 2015 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Histoire de madame Henriette d'Angleterre; Mémoires de la cour de France pour les années 1688 et 1689 3.37 avg rating — 30 ratings — published 1690 — 35 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Madame de La Fayette (?)

“Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you.”
― Madame de de Lafayette

29 likes

“If you judge by appearances in this place,' said Mme de Chartres, 'you will often be deceived, because what appears to be the case hardly ever is.”
― Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves

20 likes

“There are those to whom we dare give no sign of the love that we feel for them, except in things that do not touch them directly; and, though one dares not show them that they are loved, one would at least like them to see that one does not wish to be loved by anyone else. One would hope them to know that there is no beauty, whatever her rank in society, whom one would not look upon with indifference, and that there is no crown that one would wish to purchase at the price of not seeing them again.”
― Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Clèves

tags: love

10 likes

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Polls

July 2020 Old school poll

A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe 1722, 336 pages

92 votes, 27.6%

The Aeneid by Virgil -19, 442pages

63 votes, 18.9%

Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell 1853, 432 pages

61 votes, 18.3%

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott 1884, 96 pages

60 votes, 18.0%

The Princesse de Clèves by Madame de La Fayette 1678, 288 pages

25 votes, 7.5%

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson 1884, 432 pages

16 votes, 4.8%

Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost 1731, 192 pages

16 votes, 4.8%

333 total votes

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