Wendy Gibson – författare

This book aims to trace the life of the seventeenth-century Frenchwoman from cradle to the grave through mainly contemporary primary sources which include just about everything from collections of laws to traveller's tales. Rather than reworking and refuting the twentieth-century experts in the field, the author works directly through from birth and childhood through matrimony, women at work, and in political life, manners and religion to conclusive death.

If Elizabeth I of England thought to rid herself forever of Robert Devereaux, Earl of Essex, by sending him to the scaffold she was very much mistaken, since his name, intertwined with hers, has traversed four centuries. Amongst those who realized the dramatic possibilities of the death of the Queen’s favourite was Thomas Corneille, a Frenchman. His interpretation of the motives and actions of the principal protagonists reflected the taste of his contemporaries in 1678 and helped prolong the popularity of the story into the eighteenth century.This is a volume in the series Textes littéraires/Exeter French Texts. The text, introduction and essential notes are all in French.

This book aims to trace the life of the seventeenth-century Frenchwoman from cradle to the grave through mainly contemporary primary sources which include just about everything from collections of laws to traveller''s tales. Rather than reworking and refuting the twentieth-century experts in the field, the author works directly through from birth and childhood through matrimony, women at work, and in political life, manners and religion to conclusive death.