About Rachilde
Rachilde (French pronunciation: [ʁaʃild]) was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (11 February 1860 – 4 April 1953). Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a Symbolist author and one of the most prominent women in literature associated with the Decadent movement of fin de siècle France. A diverse and challenging author, Rachilde's most famous work includes the darkly erotic novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), La Marquise de Sade (1887), and La Jongleuse (1900). She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe ("Why I am not a Feminist"). Her work was noted for being frank, fantastical, and always with a suggestion of autobiography underlying questions of gender, sexuality, and identity. She said of herself, "I always acted as an individual, not thinking to found a society or to upset the present one." She began to write on a commission at fifteen, taking on the name Rachilde for the first time and creating a new persona for herself. In 1884 she published her first successful novel, Monsieur Vénus.
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