Perhaps one of the greatest works of French literature is Madame de Lafayette’s The Princess of Clèves, often described as the first of all “modern” novels. This classic translation, with an introduction, by the late English novelist and biographer Nancy Mitford, was first brought out in 1951 by New Directions. It is now available as a New Directions Paperbook. Published in 1678 and written by Marie Madeleine Roche de la Vergne, Countess de Lafayette––a Parisian lady of fashion and great wit––it recreates with matchless vitality the lives and loves of the sixteenth-century courtiers of King Henry II of France.…