First hand information comes from three people directly concerned: Dominique Aury (author), Jean Paulhan (author of the preface) and Jean-Jacques Pauvert (publisher).

Aury’s text (as Réage) Une fille amoureuse (A Girl in Love) published with Retour à Roissy (Return to the chateau) in 1969 contains substantial points on the genesis of Story of O. Besides, Aury gives several interviews as Pauline Réage and as Dominique Aury on Story of O. The followings are all that we can locate so far :

As Pauline Réages :
- Interview with Jacqueline Demornex, Elle (Edition française), 2 September 1974.
- Régine Deforges, On m’a dit, entretiens avec Pauline Réage (Paris: JeanJacques Pauvert, 1975)

As Dominique Aury :
- Vocation: clandestine, entretien avec Nocole Grenier (Paris: Gallimard, 1999)
(transcription of a long interview realised for French TV documentary in 1989).
- John de St. Jorre, “The Unmasking of O”, The New Yorkers (1st August 1994)
(article largely based on interviews with Aury. The first authorized revelation of her authorship of Story of O)
- Interview with Hector Bianciotti, “Dominique Aury, la littérature comme l'amour”, Le Monde (24th March,1995)
- Erotica : A Journey Into Female Sexuality dir. by Maya Gallus
(A Canadian TV documentary including a filmed interview with Dominique Aury realised in 1997)

From Paulhan (who died 1968) we have, apart from the preface to Story of O, only one interview published in 1955 and his deposition to the police of the same year :
- “Jean Paulhan préface un livre dangereux”, Arts, n°. 472, du 14 au 20 juillet, 1954 (entretien avec Jean-François Begery à propos d’Histoire d’O)
- “Brigade Mondaine. Audition de Jean Paulhan, le 15 août 1955", repr. in Régine Deforges, On m’a dit, op. cit.

Pauvert gave recently his account in the preface to a photo-illustrated version of Story O,
- Histoire d’O illustré par Doris Kloster (Paris: Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 2000).
He mentions also briefly Story of O in his book,
- La littérature érotique (Paris : Flammarion, 2000)

Other fragmentary information can be found in biographical sources on Paulhan (especially in his correspondences) and studies on Paulhan. The website of La société des lecteurs de Jean Paulhan provides useful and latest information on Paulhan studies.

The most reliable and detailed reportage ever written on history of Story of O is
- John de St. Jorre, The Good Ship Venus : the Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press (London: Hutchinson, Random House Group, Ltd., 1994 and Pimlico, 1996)
The author interviewed Aury and Pauvert to gather first-hand testimonies. A part of this investigation was published as the above-mentioned The New Yorker article. (For detailed reference to de St. Jorre’s book, see his web site).

Another interviewer of Aury, Nicole Grenier (Vocation Clandestine) published recently her account,
- "Anne-Dominique-Pauline Desclos-Aury-Réage", Sigila, n°6, October 2000


On the basis of those credible sources and supplementing them with new information, in this site we are trying to establish as the most reliable version of the story as we can.