RESTIF, NICOLAS EDME (1734-1806), called RESTIF DE LA BRETONNE, French novelist, son of a farmer, was born at Sacy (Yonne) on Oct. 23, 1734. He was educated by the Jansenists at Bicetre, and on the expulsion of the Jansenists was received by one of his brothers, who was a cure. Owing to a scandal in which he was involved, he was apprenticed to a printer at Auxerre, and, having served his time, went to Paris. Here he worked as a journeyman printer, and in 1760 he married Anne or Agnes Lebegue, a relation of his former master at Auxerre. Restif produced about two hundred volumes, many of them printed with his own hand, on almost every conceivable subject. He drew on the episodes of his own life for his books, which dis play an extraordinary licence in choice of subject and in treat ment. They provide useful documents for the history of the underworld of the period. They include : Le Pied de Fanchette, a novel (1769) ; Le Pornographe (1769), a plan for regulating pros titution which is said to have been actually carried out by the Emperor Joseph II., while not a few detached hints have been adopted by continental nations; Le Paysan perverti (1775), a novel with a moral purpose, sufficiently horrible in detail; La Vie de mon pere (1779); Les Contemporaines (42 vols., 1780-1785),
a vast collection of short stories; Ingenue Saxancour, also a novel (1785) ; and, lastly, the extraordinary autobiography of Monsieur Nicolas (16 vols., the last two are practically a separate and much less interesting work), in which at the age of sixty he has set down his remembrances, his notions on ethical and social points, his hatreds, and above all his numerous loves, real and fancied. The original editions of these, and indeed of all his books, have long been bibliographical curiosities owing to their rarity, the beautiful and curious illustrations which many of them contain, and the quaint typographic system in which most are composed. Just before his death (Feb. 2, 18o6) Napoleon gave him a place in the ministry of police.
See J. Assezat's selection from the Contemporaines, with excellent introductions (3 vols., 1875), and the valuable reprint of Monsieur Nicolas (14 vols., 1883-84) ; also Eugen Diihren, Retif de la Bretonne, der Mensch, der Schriftsteller, der Reformator (Berlin, 1906), and Retif-Bibliothek (Berlin, 1906).