Dominique Aury

Anne Cécile Desclos 23 September 1907 27 April 1998 was a French journalist and novelist who wrote under the pen names Dominique Aury and Pauline Réage She is best known for her erotic novel Story of O 1954 Born in Rochefort CharenteMaritime France to a bilingual family Desclos began reading in French and English at an early age After completing her studies at the Sorbonne she worked as a journalist until 1946 when she joined Gallimard Publishers as the editorial secretary for one of its imprints where she began using the pen name of Dominique Aury An avid reader of English literature Desclos either translated or introduced to readers in France such renowned authors as Algernon Charles Swinburne Evelyn Waugh Virginia Woolf T S Eliot F Scott Fitzgerald and numerous others She became a critic and was made a member of the jury for several prominent literary awards Desclos lover and employer Jean Paulhan a fervent admirer of the Marquis de Sade had made the remark to her that no woman was capable of writing an erotic novel To prove him wrong Desclos wrote a graphic sadomasochistic novel that was published under the pseudonym Pauline Réage in June 1954 Titled Histoire dO Story of O with a sympathetic preface by Jean Paulhan which nevertheless did not reveal her identity it was an enormous though controversial commercial success The book caused much speculation as to the identity of the author Many doubted that it was a woman let alone the demure intellectual and almost prudish persona displayed in Dominique Aurys writings Many wellknown male writers were alternately suspected to be the author including André Malraux and Henri de Montherlant In addition the books graphic content sparked so much controversy that the following March the government authorities brought obscenity charges against the publisher and its mysterious author that were thrown out of court in 1959 However a publicity ban and a restriction on the books sale to minors was imposed by the judge Following the lifting of the publicity ban in 1967 the conclusion to Story of O was published under the title Retour à Roissy using the pseudonym of Pauline Réage However according to her recent biography by Angie David Desclos did not write this second novel In 1975 she did a long interview about erotic books with author Régine Deforges published by Story of O editor JeanJacques Pauvert yet at the time her authorship was still unknown An Englishlanguage edition of the interview was released in the United States in 1979 by Viking Press Eventually Desclos publicly admitted that she was the author of The Story of O in 1994 40 years after the book was published in an interview with The New Yorker She also explained the pseudonym of Pauline Réage she chose the first name in homage to Pauline Bonaparte and Pauline Roland and she randomly picked up the name of Réage on a topographic map Writer of O a 2004 documentary film by Pola Rapaport mixed interviews with reenactments of certain scenes from the book In the documentary the real author of Story of O Dominique Aury actually a pen name of Desclos talks about the book A Girl in Love This book was written about how Story of O was written Source Article Anne Desclos from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30