LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH (1836-1895) was an Austrian journalist and author, best known for his romantic stories of Eastern Central European life. Sacher-Masoch studied law, mathematics, and history at the University of Graz and soon after became a professor in what is now the city of Lviv, Ukraine. He wrote several non-fiction works before focusing on Austrian folktales. Socialist and humanist ideals, as well as historical themes, heavily influenced his fictional writing; from the 1860s to the 1880s he published a wide variety of short stories, which soon eclipsed his non-fiction writing. Von Sacher-Masoch's most famous short story, Venus in Furs (1870), originally part of the Legacy of Cain series, is one of only a few of his titles translated into English. The sado-masochistic themes of the tale, as well as von Sacher-Masoch's own proclivities, contributed to the term "masochism" being derived from his name.