Sappho (novel)
Sappho: Parisian Manners is an 1884 novel by the French writer Alphonse Daudet. It was serialised in L'Écho de Paris in 1884.
Plot
The book is largely autobiographical and inspired by Daudet's relationship with Marie Rieu. Jean Gaussin is a young man from a wealthy family in southern France and works for the government in Paris. He begins a relationship with Fanny Legrand, initially unaware of her career as a scandalous model under the name Sappho. They live together for five years and eventually adopt a child. Fanny is smitten with the child and becomes distant from Jean. Jean begins an affair with another woman, Irène, favoured by his parents to become his wife, only to return to Fanny with renewed affection. The relationship becomes more complicated when Jean realises the child they adopted is Fanny's biological child from a previous affair with a criminal, prompting him to reject her again. Realising his intact, strong affection for Fanny, Jean cancels his plans to marry Irène and returns to Fanny, who agrees to leave with him. Jean goes ahead to Marseille, but is informed by Fanny that she will not join him.Reception
The book inspired a wave of novels with lesbian themes, including Sapphô by Jean Richepin, by Paul Bourget, Paris impur by Charles Vimaire, Gomorrhe by, La Dernière journée de Sapphó by Gabriel Faure and Sapho de Lesbos by Maurice Morel.The 1943 Carlos Hugo Christensen Argentine film, Safo, historia de una pasión, is based on the novel. Reputedly, it is the first "erotic melodrama" in Argentine cinema.