Madame De Maintenon

Madame de Maintenon received a wealth of fantastic reviews in hardback. For fans of Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette, Stella Tillyard's Aristocrats, Amanda Foreman's Georgiana and Paula Byrne's Perdita There has been no biography of Madame de Maintenon in English since the 1970s

The rags-to-riches story of Francoise d'Aubigne, wife of the Sun-King of FranceFrancoise d'Aubigne, born in a bleak provincial prison, her father a condemned murderer and traitor to the state, rose from the depths of poverty to life at the vortex of power at Versailles. Married at fifteen to a tragically disfigured and scandalously popular poet, in his salon Francoise encountered all the brilliant characters of the seventeenth century's glitterati. After her husband's death, she led the life of a merry widow in the colourful Marais quarter of Paris, before becoming governess to the King's growing brood of royal batards. This is the extraordinary story of one woman's daring journey from beggar-girl, West Indian colonist and salonniere to royal mistress and thence, in secret, to the compromised position of Louis' uncrowned Queen. Through the rags-to-riches tale of the marquise de Maintenon, Veronica Buckley reveals every layer of the vibrant and shocking world that was France in the age of Louis XIV.