COLLECTED MAXIMS AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, a member of a prominent French aristocratic family, was born in Paris in 1613. He was married at the age of 14 and took part in his first military campaign the following year. For the next quarter of a century he participated actively in military life, supporting the interests of the hereditary French aristocracy not only against foreign armies, but at times also against the king and his chief minister (Richelieu under Louis XIII, Mazarin under Louis XIV). When Louis XIV finally gained control of Paris in 1652, La Rochefoucauld retired from public life. In 1657–8 he began to compose the sayings published in 1664 as Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales (Moral Reflections or Sententiae and Maxims). The work was carefully revised several times, its fifth and final authorized edition appearing in 1678. La Rochefoucauld died in Paris in 1680. Many further maxims, and the nineteen essays now known as the Réflexions diverses (Miscellaneous Reflections), were published posthumously from his manuscripts.
E. H. and A. M. BLACKMORE and FRANCINE GIGUÈRE have translated Twelve Plays by Alfred de Musset and George Sand’s Five Comedies and The Devil’s Pool and Other Stories. E. H. and A. M. Blackmore have also edited and translated nine other volumes of French literature, including, in Oxford World’s Classics, Six French Poets of the Nineteenth Century, The Essential Victor Hugo, and Stéphane Mallarmé’s Collected Poems and Other Verse. Their work has been awarded the American Literary Translators’ Association Prize and the Modern Language Association Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation. Their other publications include literary criticism and studies in psycholinguistics and grammatical awareness.