A must-read for French students: the countess obsessed with secrecy and love

Madame de La Fayette, now compulsory reading, was a pioneer of romantic fiction

In 1662 the French noblewoman Madame de La Fayette, published anonymously what is thought to be France’s first modern novel, La Princesse de Montpensier. Drawing on her knowledge of history and experience of Louis XIV’s court, de La Fayette penned a short, complicated tale of love, adultery, jealousy and betrayal that ends in tears and tragedy, set a century before, at the time of the wars of religion.

The book was an instant success, even if the critics attacked the then unnamed author of mixing fact and fiction in dubious fashion and slandering historical figures along the way. La Princesse de Montpensier is credited with inspiring Stendhal more than a hundred years later and Eugène Fromentin two centuries on. It is also the stuff of modern-day romantic pot-boilers and soap operas.

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