The book is autobiographical in inspiration and tells the story of the love affair between a young journalist called Léo and the heroine of the title, a would-be actress who works in a factory for artificial pearls as well as in a licensed brothel.
Huysmans intended its squalid realism as an attack on the overidealised view of bohemian life in Paris he found in such Romantic writers as Henri Murger, whose famous Scènes de la vie bohème had appeared in 1848.
Huysmans' style in Marthe owes a great deal to his literary hero at the time, Edmond de Goncourt.
To avoid prosecution, Huysmans travelled to Brussels to have Marthe issued by the Belgian publisher Jean Gay, who had considerable experience smuggling contraband books across the French border.
Huysmans decided against smuggling it into France but when he attempted to take 400 copies through French customs, all but a handful were impounded.