American Magdalene: The Life Behind the Scandalous Book Madeleine: An Autobiography

This work reexamines Madeleine: An Autobiography, a controversial bestseller first published in 1919 that documented the pseudonymous author's life as a sex worker in the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth century. It reconstructs the life behind the text through historical photographs, a lost epilogue from the 1924 edition, newly uncovered interviews, and the author's own family history. Written in a time when these experiences were both common and often erased, the autobiogr...