Madeleine Hachard was one of the twelve Ursulines who left France in 1727 to establish a convent in Louisiana. The daughter of a procureur in the Chambre de Comptes in Rouen, Hachard is the most famous of these women because of the publication in 1728 of a series of letters sent to her father describing her voyage across the Atlantic. Ever since their rediscovery in the mid-19th century, these letters have been treated as authentic. However, the editorial strategies adopted by the letters' Rouen printer, Antoine Le Prévôst, reveal that they are a hoax designed to parody Jesuit publications. Prévôst strategies, which involve plagiarizing purloined manuscripts, altering them for humorous content, using inexpensive paper, and publishing with a permission tacite, all point to the fraudulent nature of the Hachard letters. A possible motive may have been Prévôt's dispute with the printers of Jesuit publications in the Rouen guild.