Aury shocked French society in 1954 with her book The Story of O. Written under the pen name Pauline Reage, Aury only admitted that she was the author in a 1994 New Yorker magazine interview.
The book, written as a love letter to a critic who said she wouldn’t be capable of writing an erotic novel, won the 1955 Deux-Magots literary prize and sold millions of copies in 20 languages. Aury died April 26 at age 90.