One of the challenges in reading French Decadent literature is a shortage of English translations. Many works by key Decadent writers, such as Jean Lorrain, Catulle Mendes, J.-K. Huysmans, Octave Mirbeau, and Rachilde lack recent (or any) English translation. This hampers the ability to study a literary movement that, in my opinion, played a significant role in the transformation of literature from Romanticism and Naturalism to Modernism. In the case of Rachilde, I believe her only novel in English was – for a long time – an old translation of her succès de scandale Monsieur Vénus (1884). In the 90’s, access to her oeuvre broadened somewhat. Melanie Hawthorne translated The Juggler (1900), and Liz Heron translated The Marquise de Sade (1887). Later, Monsieur Vénus itself received a much-needed new translation from Hawthorne. However, this was still only a glimpse of her fin de siècle output. The problem with old translations of Decadent literature is they’re inherently unrelia...