| Sappho: Parisian Manners | |
| Author: | Alphonse Daudet |
| Title Orig: | Sapho : moeurs parisiennes |
| Orig Lang Code: | fr |
| Country: | France |
| Language: | French |
| Pub Date: | 1884 |
| English Pub Date: | 1886 |
| Pages: | 337 |
Sappho: Parisian Manners (fr|Sapho : moeurs parisiennes) is an 1884 novel by the French writer Alphonse Daudet. It was serialised in L'Écho de Paris in 1884.[1]
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.
The book inspired a wave of novels with lesbian themes, including Sapphô (1884) by Jean Richepin, (1886) by Paul Bourget, Paris impur (1889) by Charles Vimaire, Gomorrhe (1889) by, La Dernière journée de Sapphó (1901) by Gabriel Faure and Sapho de Lesbos (1902) by Maurice Morel.[2]
The 1943 Carlos Hugo Christensen film, Safo, historia de una pasión, is based on the novel.[3]