[3][4] Bulgarian historian, Niko Nikov, discovered the essay in booklet form entitled Любовта на продажната жена, which had been published in Plovdiv, by 'Spolouka' in 1922, in the Sofia National Library.
The Bulgarian booklet was translated into French by Alexandre-Léon Lévy at the request of Pierre Michel so he could verify that the essay was indeed written by Mirbeau.
[1] Lévy's translation was subsequently published by Éditions Indigo – Côté Femmes,[7] with an introduction by Michel[1] and a preface by Alain Corbin,[2] a French historian who specialises in the late 19th century in France, including prostitution.
[3][4] In L'Amour de la femme vénale, Mirbeau explores the causes of prostitution, both economic and social, from his own experiences.
According to Mirbeau, there is a veritable war that pits the sexes against one another, and prostitutes are in the vanguard of this struggle,[2] since they cannot be duped by the vain and overbearing speech and appearance of male customers whom they encounter in their repulsive nudity, as had the chambermaid Célestine in Mirbeau's Le Journal d’une femme de chambre (The Diary of a Chambermaid).