Rétif was a French novelist. The term retifism for shoe fetishism was named after him (an early novel, entitled Fanchette's Foot, follows a beautiful heroine and her pretty little foot, which, with her pretty face, gets her and her shoe/s into lots of trouble). He was also reputed to have coined the term "pornographer" in the same-named book, The Pornographer.

According to 1911 Britannica,

    Restif de la Bretonne undoubtedly holds a remarkable place in French literature. He was inordinately vain, of extremely relaxed morals, and perhaps not entirely sane. His books were written with haste, and their licence of subject and language renders them quite unfit for general perusal.

He and the Marquis de Sade maintained a mutual hatred, while he was appreciated by Benjamin Constant and Friedrich von Schiller and appeared at the table of Alexandre Balthazar Laurent Grimod de La Reynière, whom he met in 1782. Jean François de La Harpe nicknamed him "the Voltaire of the chambermaids". He was rediscovered by the Surrealists in the early 20th century.

He is also noted for his advocacy of communism, indeed the term first made its modern appearance (1785) in his book review of Joseph-Alexandre-Victor Hupay de Fuveau who described himself as "communist" with his Project for a Philosophical Community.