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The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon (PICADOR) by Buckley, Veronica is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon (PICADOR) about?

Francoise d'AubignE, marquise de Maintenon and secret wife of the Sun King, Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden's seduced daughter. A timely pardon and a hopeful Caribbean colonial venture failed to mend the family's fortunes, and Francoise was reduced to begging in the streets. Yet, armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment, she was to make her way to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and ambitious court in all Europe. At fifteen, she was married off to the forty-two-year-old satirical poet Paul Scarron, a former rouE now grievously deformed by rheumatism'"a sort of human Z," as he described himself. Despite his ailments, Scarron presided over the liveliest and most scandalous literary salon in Paris, and Francoise quickly became its most prized ornament. After Scarron's death, she enjoyed a merry widowhood in the fashionable Marais district, in the company of the courtesan Ninon de Lenclos and the King's splendid mistress, AthEnaIs de Montespan, who made the young widow governess to her brood of illegitimate children. The appointment transformed Francoise's life, but was

Who reads The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon (PICADOR)?

Author

Buckley, Veronica

Publisher

Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published

2010

Language

EN

ISBN

9780312430054

Category

history

Subjects

Memoir, Fiction, Historical Fiction