After serving his apprenticeship as a printer in Auxerre, Restif went to Paris, where he eventually set the type for some of his own works—books long prized by collectors for their rarity, quaint typography, and beautiful and curious illustrations.

His novels are rambling and carelessly written. While he parades his moralistic intentions and frequently airs his views on the reform of society, his preoccupation with eroticism, tinged with mysticism, has led to his being called “the Rousseau of the gutter.” The author's life formed the basis of much of his writing, as in La Vie de mon père (1779; My Father's Life), a vivid picture of peasant life. But in this work, as in his autobiography, Monsieur Nicolas (1794–97), much of which is set in the Parisian underworld, Restif's vivid imagination has rendered it difficult to separate fact from fiction. Restif left another record of his observation of Parisian life in his own day in Les Contemporaines (1780–85; “The Modern Women”), while Le Paysan perverti (1776; “The Corrupted 【Male】 Peasant”) and La Paysanne pervertie (1784; “The Corrupted 【Female】 Peasant”) develop the theme of the demoralization of virtuous country folk in the metropolis.