The Secret Wife of Louis XIV Fran}}oise d'Aubign}}, Madame de Maintenon [Paperback]

Fran?oise d'Aubign?, marquise de Maintenon, was born in a French prison in 1635, her father a condemned traitor and murderer, her mother the warden's seduced daughter. 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.

Sparkling with irresistible wit, fine detail, and novelistic sweep, this exactingly researched biography is a pinnacle of the form.

Lively . . . Buckley has written an admirably balanced life with a wealth of biographical detail and great sympathy for her subject . . . An extraordinary adventure. The Economist

Veronica Buckley writes extremely well, and her narrative never fails to grip. She succeeds in her main aim--to show how an intelligent woman in a deeply traditional age used her personal gifts to rise from near the bottom to the summit of the social and political ladder . . . [The Secret Wife of Louis XIV] is convincing and ultimately moving, a perceptive appreciation of a remarkable woman. Munro Price, The Sunday Telegraph

Veronica Buckley was born and educated in New Zealand, and later studied at the Universities of London and Oxford. Christina, Queen of Sweden, was the subject of her much-praised first biography. She lived in Paris while researchingThe Secret Wife of Louis XIV, and now lives in Vienna.