Monfermel'skaia molochnitsa.

First Russian edition of this popular novel by the favourite author of the 19th-century bourgeoisie.

Charles Paul de Kock (1794-1871) was a prolific French novelist who wrote about 100 titles, many of them depicting the life of lower and middle-class Parisians. Kock's novels were extremely popular both at home and abroad, even though many of his contemporaries as well as later readers admitted that they were 'rather vulgar, but not immoral, demanding no literary training and gratifying no delicate taste' (New International Encyclopedia, 1905).

Kock's novels found considerable success with the Russian bourgeoisie and middle class, who were fascinated with everything French. Belinskiy and Nekrasov wrote multiple reviews of his works; Dostoevskiy mentioned Koch on multiple occasions in his own novels; Varvara Lavretskaya, the main character of the Turgenev's novel Dvorianskoe Gnezdo [The Nest of the Gentry] and a great lover of popular French literature, preferred de Kock to all other writers. wrote about de Kock 'Недостатком или, лучше сказать, совершенным отсутствием идеального элемента отличаются романы Поль де Кока, полные грязных картин но этот недостаток заменяется у него неистощимою добротою его сердца, грязные же картины имеют своё значение как зеркало французской жизни'.

La laitière de Montfermeil was originally published in French in 1827. The Russian translation by N. Shygaev was issued by a well-known St Petersburg publisher Pluchart only four years later.

Very rare. WorldCat locates only one copy in the Yudin's collection at the Library of Congress.