Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles, usually known simply as the Abbé Prévost, was a French priest, author, and novelist.
César Vichard de Saint-Réal (1639–1692) was a French polyglot.
Constance was Duchess of Brittany from 1166 to her death in 1201 and Countess of Richmond from 1171 to 1201. Constance was the daughter of Duke Conan IV by his wife, Margaret of Huntingdon, a sister of the Scottish kings Malcolm IV and William I.
A libertine is a person devoid of most moral principles, a sense of responsibility, or sexual restraints, which they see as unnecessary or undesirable, and is especially someone who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behaviour observed by the larger society. Libertinism is described as an extreme form of hedonism. Libertines put value on physical pleasures, meaning those experienced through the senses. As a philosophy, libertinism gained new-found adherents in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, particularly in France and Great Britain. Notable among these were John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, and the Marquis de Sade.
Fear of Flying is a 1973 novel by Erica Jong. It became controversial for its portrayal of female sexuality, and figured in the development of second-wave feminism.
Eustache Le Sueur or Lesueur was a French artist and one of the founders of the French Academy of Painting. He is known primarily for his paintings of religious subjects. He was a leading exponent of the neoclassical style of Parisian Atticism.
The Congregation of St. Maur, often known as the Maurists, were a congregation of French Benedictines, established in 1621, and known for their high level of scholarship. The congregation and its members were named after Saint Maurus, a disciple of Saint Benedict credited with introducing the Benedictine rule and life into Gaul. The congregation was suppressed and its superior-general executed during the French Revolution.
The libertine novel was an 18th-century literary genre of which the roots lay in the European but mainly French libertine tradition. The genre effectively ended with the French Revolution. Themes of libertine novels were anti-clericalism, anti-establishment and eroticism.
Thérèse Philosophe is a 1748 French novel ascribed to Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens. It has been chiefly regarded as a pornographic novel, which accounts for its massive sales in 18th-century France. Aside from that however, this novel represents a public conveyance for some ideas of the Philosophes.
Venus in the Cloister or The Nun in her Smock, known in the original French as Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise (1683) is a work of erotic fiction by the Abbé du Prat, which is a pseudonym for an unknown author. Candidates for whom this might be include Jean Barrin and François de Chavigny de La Bretonnière.
Antoine Augustin Calmet, O.S.B., a French Benedictine monk, was born at Ménil-la-Horgne, then in the Duchy of Bar, part of the Holy Roman Empire.
Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre is a five-act 1665 comedy by Molière based upon the Spanish legend of Don Juan Tenorio. The aristocrat Dom Juan is a rake who seduces, marries, and abandons Elvira, discarded as just another romantic conquest. Later, he invites to dinner the statue of a man whom he recently had murdered; the statue accepts and reciprocates Dom Juan's invitation. In the course of their second evening, the stone statue of the murdered man charms, deceives, and leads Dom Juan to Hell.
Édouard-Henri Avril was a French painter and commercial artist. Under the pseudonym Paul Avril, he was an illustrator of erotic literature. His career saw collaboration with influential people like Octave Uzanne, Henry Spencer Ashbee and Friedrich Karl Forberg.
Pierre Mac Orlan, sometimes written MacOrlan, was a French novelist and songwriter.
François-Rolland Elluin was a French engraver, notoriously known for his illustrations of erotic scenes.
The Sisters of the Christian Doctrine of Nancy (D.C.) is a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church for women, whose primary mission is the teaching and nursing of the poor. Its members place after their names the order's initials, D.C. They are known as the "Vatelottines" in honor of their founder, and also "School Sisters", especially in Germany and Luxembourg, because of their primary mission. They should not be confused with the Spanish order of the Sisters of the Christian Doctrine (Mislata), which was founded in 1880.
Jean-Charles Gervaise de Latouche, was a French writer. He was a lawyer at the Parlement de Paris of the Ancien Régime.
Émile Baumann was a French writer.
La Camargo is a 3-act opéra comique with music by Charles Lecocq and words by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo. It is a highly fictionalised story of two historical 18th-century characters, the dancer La Camargo and the bandit Louis Mandrin.
