A PEASANT WOMAN'S MASTERPIECE.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 14030, 29 April 1911, Page 7

A PEASANT WOMAN'S MASTERPIECE.

The latest sensation in the world of letters is a scries of autobiographic sketches, entitled '"'Marie Claire,' by a French sempstress named Marguerite Audoux. We learn that she lost her mother at an early age, and being left with a drunken father, fortunately found refuge for a time in a convent. Subsequently she worked for some years on a farm leading the "hard life which French peasant women endure so uncomplainingly. Then she came to Paris, worked as a sempstress, which, as Mr Arnold Bennett, in his '"introduction," tells us, means "eleven hours' close application n day, six full days a week at lialf-a-croTvn a day." Her eyesight became defective: she wanted distraction, nnd she found it- in writing—principally in writing these memoirs. It is a com-

parativeiy small book, reckoning by the number of words, but its composition stretched over a period of six years. By a piece of great good fortune, which could have hardly occurred in any other city but Paris, she became acquainted with a circle of literary young men, some of them quite distinguished, among them bein" Charles Louis Philippe, author of "Bubu do Parnate," lehJ (author of 'Cauet"), Francis Jourdain, and Regis Gignoux, tiie literary and dramatic critic. They encouraged her to write in her own way. giving her no literary assistance, but helping her to publication. The ir-miniscences thus set down arc of uninuM interest. They are distinguis'hcfl by the simplicity of their style, their delicate portrayal of character, and strike one as the outpourings of a singularly pure mind and unsophisticated spirit. Doubtless they would read much better in the original than in the present translation. The original Fr,-. PO h edition, to which M. Octave Mirbeau wrote a preface, had ft great vogue. It ran a triumphant course as a serial in one of tho great reviews, and within a few weeks of its publication as a bonk thirty thousand copies had been sold. The English version is olso the subject of a literary "boom," which seems to possess a good deal of justification. (London: G. Bell and ."-Vms, Ltd. Christehurch: Fountain Barber. 3s 6d.)