Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne (Comtesse de Lafayette) (1634-1693) was a French writer. She was born in Paris to a family of minor but rich nobility. In 1655, de La Vergne married Fran ois Motier, Comte de Lafayette, a widowed nobleman some eighteen years her senior, with whom she would have two sons. Settling permanently in Paris in 1659, Lafayette published, anonymously, La Princesse de Montpensier in 1662. Her most famous novel was La Princesse...