The intelligent and good-looking Renée d'Anjou-Mézières is promised to the Duke of Mayenne, but she loves his brother, the Duke of Guise, who … See more

Love versus duty is the overriding theme of the book. An attractive and thoughtful young woman is torn between her desire for another man and her responsibilities as a wife. In this, she prefigures both the author's later novel The Princess of Cleves and the tragic … See more

Novellas by Jean Regnault de Segrais pioneered what has become the modern French novel. Following Spanish models, he used a simple … See more

After over 350 years the book is still widely read in France, where for the 2017–18 academic year it was a set book in the baccalauréat littéraire, the first time in the history of the … See more

Compared with the floweriness and pomposity of much preceding French fiction, Madame de La Fayette writes in a pared-down prose which almost has the air of a … See more

The first edition, in octavo with 142 pages, was published anonymously by T. Jolly in Paris in 1662. Handwritten copies of the work had been circulating for some time before, leading the … See more

An adaptation for cinema was the 2010 film The Princess of Montpensier, directed by Bertrand Tavernier and scripted by him and Jean Cosmos from a treatment by François-Olivier … See more