Fifty Shades of Grey, the first novel in the Fifty Shades trilogy, is an erotic romance novel by E. L. James, published in 2011. The story began as fanfiction for the vampire romance novel Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. In August 2009, James posted it on fanfiction.com as Master of the Universe under the pen name Snowqueens Icedragon. After reworking the story as original fiction, James published the newly named Fifty Shades of Grey through the Writer’s Coffee Shop, an independent online Australian publisher, in May 2011. After word-of-mouth recommendations increased interest in the story, Vintage Books published a revised edition in April 2012.

Since then, the book has sold over 150 million copies worldwide, topping best-sellers lists, especially in the United States and the UK. The book has been translated into 52 languages. In 2015, Focus Features, Michael De Luca Productions, and Trigger Street Productions produced the film adaptation. Fifty Shades of Grey is considered an example of viral marketing, and it renewed interest in erotic literature among readers and publishers. Fifty Shades of Grey is the first in the Fifty Shades series, which includes this novel, Fifty Shades Darker, and the final installment, Fifty Shades Freed.

In the first novel, Anastasia “Ana” Steele is a 21-year-old English Literature major at the University of Washington, Vancouver.