The secret wife of Louis XIV : Francoise d'Aubigne, Madame de Maintenon / by Veronica Buckley

New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. First Edition. Hardback. An exceptional copy; fine in an equally fine dw, now mylar-sleeved. Particularly and surprisingly well-preserved; tight, bright, clean and especially sharp-cornered. Literally as new.; 8vo 8"" - 9"" tall; 498 pages; Description: xv, 498 p. , 16 p. Of plates : ill. (some col. ), map, geneal. Tables ; 24 cm. Subjects: Maintenon, Madame de (1635-1719) --Louis XIV, King of France (1638-1715) --Relations with women --Favorites, Royal --France --Biography --Kings and rulers --Paramours --Biography --Court and courtiers --History --Louis XIV (1643-1715). Publisher description: The Marquise de Maintenon, mistress of Louis XIV, was born in a bleak French prison in 1635. Her father was a condemned traitor and murderer who seduced the warden's daughter. Yet in her lifetime, Françoise d'Aubigne; -armed with beauty, intellect, and shrewd judgment-managed to make her way from grimmest poverty to the center of power at Versailles, the most opulent and cutthroat court in all Europe. This is the extraordinary story of Françoise's progress from brilliant salonnière to governess for the king's illegitimate children and, finally, to the delicate position of Louis's secret wife and uncrowned queen. Louis, who as supreme sovereign believed he had entre; e to any bed he chose, would remain in love with her for forty years. Bursting with the gossip of such witty contemporary chroniclers as Madame de Se; vigne; , this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form. In vibrant, shocking colors, it paints a portrait of France in the process of becoming itself, and Europe in an age of violent change.