"The Heptameron" tales and novels of Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, and translated into English by Arthur Machen - Alfred A. Knopf, 1925 first thus American edition - 18cmx15cm - condition: very good, minor rubbing to edges The Heptaméron is a collection of 72 short stories written in French by Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549), published posthumously in 1558. It has the form of a frame narrative and was inspired by The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio.[1] It was originally intended to contain one hundred stories covering ten days like The Decameron, but at Marguerite’s death it was completed only as far as the second story of the eighth day. Many of the stories deal with love, lust, infidelity, and other romantic and sexual matters. One was based on the life of Marguerite de La Rocque, a French noblewoman who was punished by being abandoned with her lover on an island off Quebec. In 1973, the French director Claude Pierson (1930-1997) made an adaptation of this work, entitled Ah! Si mon moine voulait…, with Alice Arno in the cast.