Madame de La Fayette

Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette was a French aristocrat and writer at the court of Louis XIV, close to the moralist La Rochefoucauld, who read her drafts. She published anonymously, as a noblewoman was expected to, and denied authorship to the end. La Princesse de Clèves (1678) is often called the first modern psychological novel, and set off the earliest recorded public debate over a work of fiction.