17th Century
Honoré d'Urfé. L'Astrée, 1607-19. (First three parts in Urfé's lifetime, fourth and fifth after his death in 1625.)
"Heroic" Romance, 1622-60, as regards its principal examples, the exact dates of which are given in a note to p. 176. Madame de Villedieu wrote almost up to her death in 1683.
Fairy Tales, etc. The common idea that Perrault not only produced the masterpieces but set the fashion of the kind is inexact. Madame d'Aulnoy's Contes des Fées appeared in 1682, whereas Perrault's Contes de ma Mère L'Oye did not come till fifteen years later, in 1697. The precise dates of the writing of Hamilton's Tales are not, I think, known. They must, for the most part, have been between the appearance of Galland's Arabian Nights, 1704, and the author's death in 1720. As for the Cabinet and its later constituents, see below on the eighteenth century.
Sorel, Ch. Francion, 1622; Le Berger Extravagant, 1627.
Scarron, P. Le Roman Comique, 1651.
Cyrano de Bergerac. Histoire Comique, etc., 1655.
Furetière, A. Le Roman Bourgeois, 1666.
La Fayette, Madame de. La Princesse de Clèves, 1678. Her first book, La Princesse de Montpensier (much slighter but well written), had appeared eighteen years earlier, and Zaïde or Zayde in 1670, fathered by Segrais.
Fénelon. Télémaque, 1699.