Gabriel-Joseph de Lavergne, viscount of Guilleragues, was working in the service of the Louis XIV as a diplomat. Recent scholarship has identified Guilleragues as the author of these letters, it is generally believed today that the letters are a fictionalised account by Guilleragues himself, inspired by Letters of Abelard and Héloïse, and are not the actual love letters of Mariana Alcoforado. He kept his identity secret as author of the letters as protection, although many of his famous friends, such as Racine, knew.
Stendhal wrote in Life of Rossini : "It is necessary to have loved as implacably as the Portuguese Nun, and with all the unquenchable ardour of which she has left us so vivid an echo in her immortal Letters"
First published in 1668 by then small Parisian bookseller Claude Barbin,...
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