A writer and cultural arbiter of a salon in France from the early 1880s until 1930, Rachilde (Marguerite Eymery) won celebrity with Monsieur Vénus. An inversion of the Pygmalion story, the novel was judged to be pornographic, and a Belgian court sentenced its author (in absentia) to two years in prison. Verlaine congratulated Rachilde on the invention of a new vice.
Melanie Hawthorne is Professor of French at Texas A&M University. Her research focuses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century French literature, with special emphasis on prose fiction of the decadent period and on women writers.
Liz Constable is associate professor in the women and gender studies program at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on late-nineteenth-century and twentieth-century French and francophone cultural studies and film. She has published widely in these areas, including articles on Simone de Beauvoir and French women decadent writers.
