She was involved in many bohemian literary circles and was at the forefront of the Symbolist and Decadent movements. In 1889 she married Alfred Vallette, a co-founder of the
Mercure de France review, where she maintained a high profile as a literary critic, enjoyed a prestigious reputation as a novelist, and presided over a celebrated literary salon. A prolific writer, she published many works of literature (novels, plays, and even poetry), literary criticism, and memoirs. Her reputation declined somewhat after the turn of the century, and, although she enjoyed renewed popularity in some circles in the 1920s and 1930s, she never regained her position in the avant-garde and died all but forgotten in 1953.
Rachilde's most significant involvement with the theater coincided with what one critic has called the Golden Age of French Symbolism, the decade 1890 to 1900. In French theater, too, this decade marked a historic moment. By the end of the nineteenth century theater had become principally a form of entertainment dominated by bourgeois values and tastes. The Symbolists aspired to reclaim theater as an art form by reasserting its poetic qualities. Their challenge was facilitated by the 1887 founding of André Antoine's Naturalist theater, the Théâtre Libre, which created a sensation in Paris with its new, superrealistic staging.
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