Mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon: Siècle de Louis XIV, la régence, Louis XV

"Mémoires du duc de Saint-Simon" by duc de Louis de Rouvroy Saint-Simon is a memoir written between 1739-1749. This nearly 3,000-page manuscript chronicles thirty years at the French court, from 1691 to 1723, spanning the final years of Louis XIV's reign and the Regency period. Written with piercing observation and vivid detail, these memoirs remained unpublished until 1829, long after the author's death. The work profoundly influenced major French writers including Chateaubriand, Stendhal, Balzac, and Proust, becoming a monument of French literature.