Pauline Réage

Pauline Réage was the pseudonym of Anne Desclos, a respected French journalist and editor who, decades after the fact, revealed herself as the author of the notorious 1954 erotic novel Story of O.

“Pauline Réage” was for decades one of the great mysteries of French literature — the pseudonymous author of Story of O (1954), a notorious and elegantly written erotic novel of sexual submission that scandalized its era and won the prestigious Prix des Deux Magots. Only late in her life did Anne Desclos, an accomplished journalist and editor at the prestigious Nouvelle Revue Française, reveal that she had written the book.

Story of O has remained one of the most controversial works of erotic literature, praised by some for its literary qualities and condemned by many, especially feminists, for its disturbing vision of female submission and self-erasure. It occupies a contested place in literary history as both a serious literary provocation and a deeply troubling text.

Desclos died in 1998. Her single famous work continues to provoke debate about the boundaries of literature, desire, and representation.