Audoux, Marguerite (1863–1937)
Audoux, Marguerite (1863–1937)
French novelist. Born in 1863 in France, orphaned; died in 1937. Worked as a servant and wrote in herspare time, including the autobiographical Marie-Claire (1910).
After her mother died while giving birth and her father abandoned her as an infant, Marguerite Audoux was banished to an orphanage, where she grew up before being hired as a farm servant in Sologne. Several long years later, Audoux moved to Paris and took work as a seamstress. The author Charles-Louis Philippe befriended Audoux and introduced her to the literary circles of Paris. In her spare hours away from her needle and thread, Audoux wrote Marie-Claire, a largely autobiographical and acutely realistic depiction of working-class life in France. The novel, published in 1910, received critical acclaim and international circulation for its subtle exposure of the indentured nature of working-class life. Audoux continued to write following her debut, but no other novel was so well received or so respected as her first.
Crista Martin , Boston, Massachusetts