50 Shades Of Class

Anne Desclos, The Story of O [Histoire d’O] (1954)

Published under the pen name “Pauline Réage,” the novel describes the sexual enslavement of a woman called “O,” and is so graphically brutal in its descriptions of bondage, torture, and captivity in an old mansion named “Samois” that it was presumed to be written by a man. It won the French Prix des Deux Magots, but obscenity charges were still brought against the publisher.