Restif de la Bretonne was perhaps the key author inspired by the publication of the Marquis de Sade's obscene' masterworks Juliette and Justine. In 1798 Restif wrote this pornographic epic, thus beginning a long tradition that continues to this day. The story is a pornographic novelization of Restif's sexual debauches, which he tried to defend 'morally' by declaring it an 'antidote' to the supposed poison of de Sade; yet while it opens with a warning to women against cruelty, it soon develops into an odyssey of sexual depravity which rivals de Sade in its relentlessy explicit nature.'