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 Francois 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 de Cleves, France"s first historical novel, first published anonymously in 1678. An immense success, the work is often taken to be a prototype of the early psychological novel.