Prudish pornographer, gender-bending anti-feminist, anarchist reactionary, “Queen of the Decadents” yet nemesis to the Surrealists, Rachilde was a fin-de-siècle French author who embodied antithetical extremes, and whose life of notoriety spanning nearly a century ended in a death in near obscurity in 1953. Known primarily for novels such as Monsieur Vénus (1884), Madame Adonis (1888), and La Marquise de Sade (1887), whose titles announce the gender switching and sexual theatrics central to her œuvre, she was also a playwright, essayist, biographer, journalist and salonnière, a …
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Citation: Hyman, Erin Williams. "Rachilde". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 March 2007 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11777, accessed 21 November 2024.]