her life story, she rose about the limits of society, her confused friendship with misogynists, and even her parents' wish that she had been a boy. She was outside of all these things, because she was none of them. Bearing the family curse, she described herself as a werewolf. She embraced the animal side as preferable to being the human product of her parents, perhaps also recalling the status of another animal, the pet monkey who usurped her place in the family affections. Her last publication was another memoir in 1947: Quand J'étais Jeune ("When I was Young"). It is the final version of the life story she wants us to understand her by. Many of the threads from earlier memoir continue. It is not generally considered credible for dates and ages. It is also when she clearly recounts a dreamlike memory that even she doesn't trust of meeting an illegitimate half-brother and staring at him, realizing how much alike they look, and feeling as if really he was a male reflection of herself. Influence and legacy The most important impact that Rachilde had was upon the literary world in which she lived. Monsieur Venus caused great scandal, but in general her works were not widely read by the general public and were almost forgotten. There has been a resurgence of interest in her after the 1977 reissue of Monsieur Venus, but even that is often relegated to literary scholars with an interest in feminist or LGBTQ topics. During her lifetime and within her world, however, Rachilde made a definite impression. In an 1886 review, Maurice Barrès famously referred to her as, "Mademoiselle Baudelaire," and explicitly situated her work in the direct lineage of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal and Charles Augustin Sainte-Beueve's Joseph Delorme. In his preface to the 1889 Monsieur Venus, he lavished her with praise for both her writing and her personal life, and compared her again to Charles Baudelaire and also to the Marquis de Custine for the quality of her writing and for her veiled approach to exploring the complications of love in her time. Some of her friends and fellow writers appreciated her mainly for her extremes of bold decadence. Jean Lorrain praised L'Animale (1893) purely for its grand depravity. Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly is said to have declared, "A pornographer, yes, she is, but such a distinguished one!" (This might have been in