Margot la ravaudeuse [Margot the Stocking Darner]

<p>Fougeret de Monbron (1706-1760) was a minor French writer known in Parisian literary circles in the 1740s and 1750s for his spoof of Voltaire's <em>Henriade</em> entitled <em>La Henriade travestie</em> (1745). He is generally considered the model for 'LUI' in Diderot's fragmented novel the <em>Neveu de Rameau</em> written some time after 1761. In addition to this his travel memoirs <em>Le Cosmopolite</em> (1750) are a recognized source of Voltaire's <em>Candide </em>(1759). Today Monbron's novel on prostitution <em>Margot la ravaudeuse</em> (1753) (or <em>Margot the stocking darner</em>) is his best known work. Widely read in France (where it has appeared in four separate editions since 1990) and moreover translated since the eighteenth century into other European languages <em>Margot </em>has never been adequately made available to English-speaking readers.</p><p>Professor Langille's new translation brings <em>Margot la ravaudeuse</em> for the first time to students of eighteenth-century literature and most especially to those interested in that intriguing sub-genre known as 'prostitution narrative'.</p>