"Claire d'Albe" by Madame Cottin is an epistolary novel published anonymously in 1798. The story follows Claire, married at fifteen to a sixty-year-old man, whose quiet country life is disrupted when Frédéric, a young orphaned relative, enters their household. Despite her virtue and devotion to her two young children, Claire finds herself drawn to Frédéric's passionate nature. What begins as innocent companionship gradually transforms into forbidden love, testing the limits of duty, desire, and moral resolve. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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