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Madame de La Fayette’s Followers (139)

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 · 22,981 ratings · 1,541 reviews · 248 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Princesse de Clèves 3.35 avg rating — 19,021 ratings — published 1678 — 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
	La Princesse de Montpensier 3.13 avg rating — 2,358 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) 3.34 avg rating — 320 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 — 251 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 3.46 avg rating — 236 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 3.23 avg rating — 123 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
	La princesse de Clèves 3.03 avg rating — 102 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
	Zaide: Histoire Espagnole 3.54 avg rating — 81 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

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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

30 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 2024 Old School Classics Poll

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908, 197 pages

51 votes, 28.3%

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, 1886, 317 pages

40 votes, 22.2%

A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde, 1893, 96 pages

33 votes, 18.3%

The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, 1648, 192 pages

26 votes, 14.4%

Klondike Tales by Jack London, 1901, 304 pages

15 votes, 8.3%

The Black Sheep by Honoré de Balzac, 1842, 339 pages

8 votes, 4.4%

Manon Lescaut by Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, 1731, 192 pages

7 votes, 3.9%

180 total votes

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