ABSTRACT
A woman called Marie identifies herself as the author of at least one of twelve lais or short verse romances, written in Anglo-Norman and found in the thirteenth-century manuscript British Library Harley 978. The same manuscript contains a collection of fables in a similar style, also claimed by a Marie ‘of (or from) France’, while Denis Piramus, an Anglo-Norman poet writing around 1180, refers to the popularity at court, particularly among the ladies, of the lais of ‘Dame Marie’. Probably all three Maries are the same woman, whom we now know as Marie de France and who is regarded as one of the most accomplished writers of medieval romance.
