Marie de France

Marie’s real name isn’t known for sure. In one of her works, she refers to herself as “Marie […] from France,” and that’s how scholars and readers have identified her ever since. Besides calling herself “Marie” in her manuscripts, the author reveals nothing else about herself. Though apparently born in France, she lived in England and probably lived and wrote in a royal court, but which one is uncertain—possibly King Henry II’s and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine’s (reigning in the late 12th and early 13th centuries). (In fact, some have speculated that she was King Henry’s sister—but given that the name “Marie” was so common, it’s almost impossible to know for sure. Others have speculated that she was an abbess somewhere in England.) Scholars have also identified her as the first woman to author verse in French. She was educated: she wrote in Anglo-Norman and was apparently familiar with Latin, Middle English, and Breton (a Celtic language spoken in France’s northwest peninsula), because Breton lais, or lays (short, rhyming tales), were the basis for the Anglo-Norman verse narratives that became known as The Lais of Marie de France. Besides authoring the Lais and some saints’ lives, Marie also translated Aesop’s Fables from Middle English to Anglo-Norman.