Memoirs of a Nun, which began as a joke and grew into a masterpiece, was one of the loudest salvos fired in the continuing battles between the clergy and the intelligentsia which defined so much of eighteenth-century French history. Diderot's story of a novice held in a convent against her will and forced to undergo curious spiritual and sexual trials displays all the brillliance, icy wit, and worldliness of the Enlightenment at its best. Translated by Francis Birrell with an introduction by P. N. Furbank