Girls in
The Image (1975)

Orally Obsessed Obscure Oration of Overt Onanism Opens Other Orifices

In 1994, forty years after its publication, the world learned the identity of the woman who wrote the famed erotic novel of dominance and submission The Story of O, the most masturbated-to work of literature ever to win the Prix des Deux Magots.

Anne Desclos, the novel’s author, was a respected journalist and literary figure linked to writers like T.S. Eliot and Evelyn Waugh. She was a bisexual in life, and wrote the novel when her boyfriend, Jean Paulhan, suggested to her that women couldn’t write pornography.

Two years later, using the nom-de-porn Jeanne de Berg, another French woman, Catherine Robbe-Grillet (wife of Alain Robbe-Grillet, father of the Nouveau Roman), wrote the similarly-themed The Image, which inspired Radley Metzger’s The Punishment of Anne.

In 1975, Emmanuelle director Just Jaeckin made a film version with Corrine Clery as O, Li Sellgren as her lesbian lover Jacqueline, Udo Kier as her first master Rene, and (after Christopher Lee turned down the role), Anthony Steel as Sir Steven, the man to whom Rene gives her as a slave.

Just as his Emmanuelle did one year ago, Just Jaeckin’s The Story of O will get a special edition release on Blu-ray November 11.

Read more after the whip.