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SIXTY YEARS OF STORY OF O: BUY NOW: Everything you wanted to know about the novel in one fifty page illustrated book! What is it? Who wrote it? When and where? The film spin-offs, the art, the literature, the facts behind the mystery and the full story of this classic of erotica never out of print in sixty years!
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Stories of O: BUY NOW: A fully illustrated and up-to-date résumé of the erotic paintings and drawings of British artist Stefan Prince who for some 40 years has taken as his inspiration the classic French erotic novel Histoire d’O (‘Story of O’).
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Reference Library:
All about ‘Story of O’ in books, articles, papers,
audio, radio, TV and more…
A Reference Library for the Story of O:
Vital Reading
The Good Ship Venus
(Hutchinson 1994) – USA title Venus Bound- the Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press And Its Writers, by John de St Jorre – “a riveting account” of the story behind Story of O and the true identity of Pauline Réage.
Dominique Aury by Angie David
Publisher: Editions Léo Scheer (2006)
Songes
six poems by Dominique Aury, published in Nouvelle Revue Francais, Nov. 1960,
and reprinted by Les Editions Perpetuelles, Dec. 1991
O m’a Dit (O Told Me) Confessions of O
Pauline Réage interviewed by Regine Deforges. Published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1975 and by the Viking Press USA
A Reference Library for the Story of O:
Audio & Visual
NEW ON VIMEO : A series of short “O-Files” videos inc. writer of O INTERVIEWS (English spoken and subtitles: Reage/Aury/Desclos TV interviews compiled by Stefan)
FRENCH PODCAST: “A life, a work” dedicated to the writer Dominique Aury and Histoire d’O features the voices of: Angie DAVID , writer and editor/ Alexandra DESTAIS , essayist/ DELFEIL de TON, journalist/ Claire PAULHAN , publisher and granddaughter of Jean Paulhan/ Catherine ROBBE-GRILLET , writer and mistress SM/ Jean-Claude ZYLBERSTEIN , lawyer and publisher
The Story of O: The Vice Francaise: A documentary broadcast on Mon, 7 Sep 2009, 23:00 on BBC Radio 4. entitled The Story of O: The Vice Francaise, presented by Rowan Pelling, former editor of the Erotic Review, which looked at the history of the book and Pauline Reage.
“Writer and former editor of The Erotic Review, Rowan Pelling, goes in search of Pauline Reage, pseudonymous author of the pornographic novel The Story of O, which caused a sensation upon its publication in Paris in 1954.
Written with an almost hallucinatory erotic intensity in spare, elegant prose, the purity of the writing took the literary world in France by storm despite the explicit scenes of bondage and sadomasochism.
Rowan goes in search of the real Pauline Réage and discovers that she was, in fact, an impeccably dressed, demure intellectual, and that she had written the novel as a love letter for her lover.”
Erotica -A Journey Into Female Sexuality Canadian tv documentary dir. by Maya Gallus features parts of a filmed interview with Dominique Aury conducted in Paris in 1997. (Films Transit International)
Erotica -A Journey Into Female Sexuality
VHS: Canadian (1997) TV documentary as above, dir. by Maya Gallus features Jeanne de Berg, Bettina Rheims, Annie Sprinkle, Alina Reyes et el, 74mins: OCLC Number 84716087
Vocation : clandestine
Dominique Aury interviewed by Nicole Grenier published by Gallimard (L’Infini) 1999
Story of O Set of two audio cassettes produced by Watershed Audio UK (1994)
Read by Kate Alexander. Excellent production in English.
Story of O Audio CD/ Publisher: Tantor Media Inc 2012: 7 cds – 8 hours, unabridged and including the prefaces by Jean Paulhan and Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues
read by American actress and narrator Kathe Mazur. Kathe Elizabeth Mazur was born in Long Beach, California in 1960. She is a American actress who spent her entire childhood in the theater where her mother worked as a assistant of the director.
Story of O
Digital disc/ Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, 2006. OCLC Number: 70787275
Story of O
Set of two audio cassettes in English: Publisher: New York, N.Y. : Simon & Schuster Audio, 1995. ISBN: 0671529773 9780671529772
O’s historie
Set of 5 audio cassettes read in Danish by Grete Tulinius
Publisher: Kbh. : Danmarks Blindebibliotek, 1990.
Histoire d’O
Four Cassette audio book with Pierre Trabut; Georges Be´jean; Ariane Devie`gue; Cora, voix.; Christiane Deis; Anna Campion / Grenoble: La Voix de son livre; Grenoble: distrib. La Voix de son livre, 1992 ISBN: 2869861362 9782869861367 / OCLC Number: 693477867
Histoire d’O
Four audio cassettes (6 hours) – French language. La Voix De Son Livre (France Nov 1999)
The Story of O
Read by Rosie Newton / Publisher: London : Royal National Institute for the Blind, 2011. Computer laser optical disc (6 hr., 37 min.) Requires DAISY software or playback equipment.; DAISY 2.02.;
O’s historie
Danish Braille book: Publisher: Kbh.:Nota, 2009. Format: Braille /OCLC Number: 488529360 Notes: Masternr.402100.
A Reference Library for the Story of O:
of further interest to the ‘O’ reader…
Testimonial from a student in Australia:
“I am a Master of Arts student at the Australian National University. My thesis on
Story of O is almost complete, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your site. Your biblio page gave me a great place to start in researching the text! As you already know, the sphere of information on the text is quite small, and they all seem to reference each other pretty closely. In most cases, I was lead time and again back to texts on your list, so thank you!”
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Unique MAP of places mentioned in the novel: O MAP – with kind permission of Sirlpe (Sweden)
Texts close to the novel:
Pauline Réage A Girl in Love 1969 (essay to be found in Retour a’ Roissy, the second part of Story of O published 15 years after the first novel)
Jean Paulhan A Slave’s Revolt 1954 (to be found in most editions of Story of O)
Regine Deforges O m’a dit – entretiens avec Pauline Reage, 1975 (Confessions of O, Viking Press 1979)
Nicole Grenier Vocation Clandestine: Dominique Aury 1999
Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues A Note on Story of O 1958 (to be found in the USA Grove Press editions of Story of O)
Songes, six poems by Dominique Aury, published in Nouvelle Revue Francais, Nov. 1960, and reprinted by Les Editions Perpetuelles, Dec. 1991
Reading (Storyof) O Emmanuelle Waeckerle (Uniform Books 2015) A kind of book as artwork/performance. Make of it what you will…
Texts of substantial interest:
John de St Jorre Good Ship Venus (Venus Bound in the USA- the story of the Olympia Press)
Susan Sontag The Pornographic Imagination (from Styles of Radical Will 1967 & included in the UK publication of Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille)
Jacqueline Demornex: Interview with Pauline Reage, Elle September 1974
La Nouvelle Revue française, hommage à Dominique Aury, n° 550 (1999)
Leo Bersani A Future for Astyanax ( Chapter 11 “Persons in Pieces” ) Little Brown & Co.(1969)
The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, & the Problem of Domination Jessica Benjamin (1988)
Angela Carter The Sadeian Woman 1992
Andrea Dworkin’s Woman as victim: Story of O (1974) Women Hating (Dutton, New York)
John Phillips Forbidden Fictions – Pornography & Censorship in 20th Century French Literature (Pluto Press 1999)
Maurice Charnet Sexual Fiction (Methuen & Co 1981) chapter (pp52-70) on Story of O and The Image
I wrote “The Story of O” – Observer article about Dominique Aury and the Story of O: “It’s an erotic classic yet it was written anonymously by a shy, intellectual French woman in honour of her secret lover. Fifty years on, Geraldine Bedell goes in search of Dominique Aury, one of the first women to write frankly about sex.” The Observer, Sunday 25 July 2004
Sade’s Publisher, A Memoir – Jean Jacques Pauvert (pub 2004)
The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde – Alyce Mahon (pub 2020) (Chapter 3 on Story of O)
Story of O BLOG: continually updated Blog on this website written by Stefan (Bookkeeper) Prince
The Story of O Files on Vimeo:
A Reference Library for the Story of O:
Articles, books & other texts:
Elle magazine Paris 1974: Pauline Reage interviewed by Jacqueline Demorne
The New Yorker Aug1994 “The Unmasking of O”.
Maria Marcus A Taste For Pain
Carnal Alchemy by Crystal Dawn and Stephen Flowers (Runa-Raven Press)
Master and Slave; The Fantasy of Erotic Domination by Jessica Benjamin (1983)
Albert Ellis ph.D Introduction (Sept 1965, NYC) (to be found in the first US paperback publication of Story of O)
Stefan’s article in Skin Two No 24 (pp86-87) and in Desire No 12 (pp26-29)
Stefan on Crepax Skin Two issue No 33
Roland Barthes on Crepax: Roland Barthes, Le Texte et l’image (Paris: Pavillon des Arts, 1986 , pp. 102-103)
Cinema D’Aujourd’hui L’Erotisme EnQuestion No4 Winter 1975/6 (Paris)
John Baxter “More Stories of O” The Sydney Morning Herald January 5-6, 2002
John Baxter A Pound of Paper : Confessions of a Book Addict (Doubleday 2002)
Molly Weatherfield The Mother of Masochism SALON August 6, 1998
Doris Kloster Histoire d’O ( a sumptuous photographic Story of O inspired by the novel ) pub 2000
Emily Apted Feminizing the Fetish Cornell University Press 1991 (pp144 -146)
Florence Montreynaud on The Story of O: Love, A Century of Love & Passion (pp 252 , Hachette 1997 / Evergreen -Taschen 1998)
Susan Griffin Pornography and Silence (first published 1981)
Pornography and Sexual Representation: a Reference Guide Joseph W Slade (2001)
Scholtz, Marius. “A Story of a Story of Story of O” Journal of Literary Studies 11.2 (1995): 49-65.
Conjurings: Mourning and Abjection in Story of O and Return to the Château (1998) Frances L. Restuccia, Ph.D. in journal Gender and Psychoanalysis
Geometry in the Boudoir Configurations of French Erotic Narrative by Peter Cryle (Cornell University Press, 1994)
Pornography and Sexual Representation: a Reference Guide Joseph W Slade (2001)
The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism (Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry – 1997)
by John K. Noyes
Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (2014) by
Amber Jamilla Musser
Master of O by Ernest Greene (2014) is an American reworking of Story of O set in modern day Los Angeles and told from the master’s point of view.
A Passion For Resistance by Dorothy Kaufmann (Cornell University Press) looks at the life and work of Edith Thomas (1909 1970), a remarkable French woman of letters who had a passionate love affair with Story of O author Dominique Aury.
“Anne-Marie” Was Edith Thomas??? Dorothy Kaufmann’s engaging book is based in large part on previously unavailable material that Edith Thomas chose not to publish during her lifetime. This included an unexpected windfall of letters, articles, poems and diaries passed to Kaufmann in a “large shopping bag” by Dominique Aury during an initial taped interview between Kaufmann and Aury in 1991. During this interview not only did Aury confirm she was the clandestine author of Story of O but revealed the presence of Edith Thomas in Story of O, as well as Aury’s reciprocal presence in much of Thomas’s writing. Their romantic relationship had lasted just under a year, ending when Aury became the lover of Jean Paulhan in 1947, but the two women of letters remained friends and co-correspondents until Thomas’s death in December 1970. There is a lot here to interest the casual reader as well as the ‘O’ reader, not least of all the perceptive portrait of Dominique Aury in which Kaufmann detects Aury’s pleasure in having multiple identities. “By not signing O with her name”, maintains Kaufmann, “(Aury) could write freely, as someone else In fact, Dominique Aury was already a pseudonym” — Stefan
Story of O is mentioned in numerous books,
articles and papers including…
A Browser’s Guide to Erotica by Roy Harley Lewis (1981)
Sadomasochism: On the Ecstacies of the Whip Hans-Jurgen Dopp
A History of Erotic Literature by Patrick J Kearney (1982)
An Anthology of Erotica by Charlotte Hill and William Wallace
SM Sensuous Magic Pat Califia
Twentieth Century French Literature Harry T. Moore
Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970 by Richard D. Burton
Enfants Terribles: Youth & Femininity in the Mass Media in France, 1945-1968 by Susan Weiner
Violence, Culture and Censure by Professor Colin Sumner
Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature by Gaëtan Brulotte and John Phillips (2006)
Sadomasochistic Literature in Earlier Cultures Wood 1995
Norman Oliver Brown. Dionysus in 1990: A lecture for the History of Consciousness Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, given on October 3, 1990 From: Brown, Norman Oliver. Apocalypse And/or Metamorphosis
Arousal: Bodies & Pleasures by Martha Roth (pp104-107)
Painful Pleasures: Sacrifice, consent, and the resignification of BDSM symbolism in The Story of O and The Story of Obi by Anne Kustritz (Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2008)
Dorothy Kaufmann : The Story of Two Women: Dominique Aury & Edith Thomas (Signs/ Journal of Women in Culture & Society – The University of Chicago Press, vol 23, no 4. 1998.)
Biman Basu: The Commerce of Peoples: Sadomasochism and African American Literature (pub 2012) makes reference to the relationship between O & Norah (and to slavery in Masoch’s Venus In Furs)
Hegel’s Dialectic of Desire and Recognition: Texts and Commentary
(1996) by John O’Neill (Editor) section on Story of O by Jessica Benjamin
Sensational Flesh: Race, Power, and Masochism (Sexual Cultures)
by Amber Jamilla Musser (includes a look at the racial dynamics between Sir Stephen, Norah and ‘O’)
The Pervert’s Progress: An Analysis of Story of O and the Beauty trilogy. Feminist Review: Issue 46. Routledge.
A Reference Library for the Story of O
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