Marguerite Audoux

She and her sister Madeleine initially lived with an aunt but ultimately spent nine years in the orphanage at Bourges.

There, she fell in love with a local boy, Henri Dejoulx, but his parents would not permit them to marry.

Iehl, who also wrote under the pen name Michel Yell, was moved by the young woman's impossible situation and accompanied her home, where he met Audoux.

Yell introduced Audoux to the Parisian intelligentsia—a group that included Charles-Louis Philippe, Léon-Paul Fargue, Léon Werth and Francis Jourdain.

Though success and critical acclaim followed quickly on the heels of the December 1910 publication of Audoux's memoirs, her next book was ten years in the making.