Rachilde (1860-1953) was a widely read author and critic and mediator of the aesthetic and intellectual ideas of Paris at the end of the 19th century, but her work has slipped into obscurity by the time of her death. Celebrity first came to with this, her second novel, which was published in Brussels in 1884 and judged to be pornographic in Belgium. Hawthorne follows the 1929 translation by Madeleine Boyd. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)