Tag: Pierre Louÿs

ALL IN THE FAMILY . . .

“Louÿs’s jolly saga of sexual insatiability…is one of the handful of erotic works that achieve true literary status.”
— Susan Sontag

“Among all Pierre Louÿs’s books, this is undoubtedly my favourite, the most moving, most uplifting and sometimes the most terrifying, the purest, the least artificial and the most modern. A masterpiece.”
—André Pieyre de Mandiargues

“One of the most moving books ever written on the fatality of desires.” —Annie Le Brun

“Amazing! It’s pornographic, but high quality!” — Jean d’Ormesson

“Here is, without question, is Pierre Louÿs’ erotic masterpiece. The strength of the novel does not come from its eventual biographical value, but from the constant transgression that manifests itself within it—containing all the erotic themes dear to the writer, elevated to a singular power. We also find here the key qualities of Louÿs’ style: the liveliness of the dialogues, the precision of the language, the irony, the relentlessness with which certain obscene words are constantly repeated. This scandalous book constitutes a total profanation and derision of this bourgeois universe to which the author belonged.”
—Jean-Paul Goujon

A young man receives an advanced education in the permutations of sex from a mother and her three—surprisingly well-educated—daughters. Part memoir, part confession, Her Three Daughters is Pierre Louÿs at his outrageously erotic best.

HER THREE DAUGHTERS
Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French by R J Dent
New Urge Editions
paperback; 340 pp.; $15

Other New Urge titles by Pierre Louÿs

Notes from the editorial office

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED (19 April 2022)
We recently updated two of our New Urge titles with new cover designs by N. Conquest. These handsome paperback editions are available at the links below.

Peculiar Charms

Hidden Gems: The Best of The Pearl

A LIBERTINE CHAPBOOK ATOP THE MENU

A second edition of Denis Diderot‘s From Their Lips to His Ear (Pocket Erotica #6) is also available. It features a delicious illustration on the flyleaf. Diderot, of course, was the highly celebrated 18th century French philosopher & editor of the groundbreaking Encyclopédie. In 1748, in need of money, he wrote this scandalous and satiric libertine allegory — Les Bijoux Indiscrets —whose hero, a sultan, is in possession of a magic ring. This exquisite little edition has been edited by Lawrence Hamilton.

CLICK HERE to order the second edition.

If you missed the recent release of two titles by the great Pierre Louÿs, be sure to check out Lips of Bilitis and A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France

“Pierre Louÿs is one of the great and glorious erotomaniacs of the end of the nineteenth century.”
— André Pierre de Mandiargues

In 2016 we published The New Pleasure & other stories by Louÿs, which is currently out of print. Below, the cover (at left), and (at right) a provocative design which never appeared.

Meanwhile, the first English translation of Alphonse Allais‘s Loves, Delights, & Organs (translated from the French by Doug Skinner) is now available. This is the thirteenth volume in our unrivaled Alphonse Allais Collection.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST…. the “funhouse” issue of BLACK SCAT REVIEW has rolled into town.

Grab it HERE.

MIND YOUR MANNERS

Pierre Louÿs wrote this scandalous and salacious satirical work in 1917, yet it wasn’t published until 1926, after his death. Originally titled Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l’usage des maisons d’éducation, it was the author’s first published erotic work—issued anonymously in Paris, with no date nor publisher’s imprint.

A Handbook of Manners for the Good Girls of France parodies the educational handbooks of the day, as well as popular guides to etiquette. But unlike the author’s elegantly sensual ouvre, including Les Chansons de Bilitis and Aphrodite: mœurs antiques, this is Louÿs’ most radical and subversive book — aimed directly at middle-class puritanism, mocking the hypocrisy and complacency of the Belle Époque. It attacks religion and social norms with equal vigor— a sharp slap in the face of censors and prudes.

It’s also very funny.

A HANDBOOK OF MANNERS FOR THE GOOD GIRLS OF FRANCE
Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French by Lono Taggers
Paperback; 70 pp., illustrated; $12
Pocket Erotica #23 / New Urge
ISBN 13 978-1-7379430-6-8

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pierre Louÿs, poet and novelist, was born in Belgium but spent his life in France. He is best known for his erotic works, many with sapphic and classical themes. His most popular titles include Aphrodite: mœurs antiques; Trois Filles de leur mère; Le Trophée de vulves légendaires; Poésies érotiques; La Femme et le pantin; and Les Chansons de Bilitis. His contributions to French erotic literature remain unequaled.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR

Originally published in 1894 under the title Les Chansons de Bilitis, this provocative collection of poetry was purportedly translated from the Ancient Greek but was, in fact, the product of the imagination of French poet Pierre Louÿs. 

A faux contemporary of the poet Sappho, Bilitis offers the modern reader these seductive, sensual, and unashamed celebrations of female sexuality. 

A beautiful book for the bedside.

LIPS OF BILITIS
Pierre Louÿs
Translated by Lono Taggers
Illustrations by Willy Pogány
Paperback; 186 pp., $14
New Urge Editions / Black Scat Books
ISBN 978-1-7379430-5-1

Victorian Vice

We’re pleased to announce the publication of VICTORIAN VICE, a new anthology featuring excerpts from the Classics of Passion series. It includes selections from some of the Victorian era’s most notorious works,  such as the infamous underground journal The Pearl; Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s startling novel Venus in Furs; “The New Pleasure” by Pierre Louÿs; as well as anonymous texts that became scandalous  sensations.

Victorian scholar Lawrence Hamilton has compiled this connoisseur’s sampler of  literature’s “forbidden pleasures” — over two hundred pages of naughty nostalgia.

 

VICTORIAN VICE
Anthology of Forbidden Pleasures
Edited by Lawrence Hamilton
New Urge Editions
240 pp., trade paper
$14.95

Available worldwide on Amazon
CLICK HERE to order

 

 

The New Pleasure

revised-cover

OUT OF PRINT

This collection of seven titillating tales by the author of Aphrodite and The Songs of  Bilitis, presents a sensual style with sublime erotic undertones. It includes the novella “Woman and Puppet” – a startling tale of obsessive love – which became the basis for Luis Buñuel’s film “That Obscure Object of Desire.”

“One night at the flat I sat in silent contemplation of two blue china cats that crouched upon a white table. I was wondering whether it would be better to pass the time smoking cigarettes or writing sonnets. Another idea was that it might be better to smoke the cigarettes and stare at the painting on the ceiling. Cigarette, sonnet, or stare? The most important thing at such an hour is to have a cigarette ready to hand and lip. It enshrouds all the most material things with scarves of cloud, fine and celestial. It adds something both to the lights and to the dark of the chamber, taking away the hard mathematics of the angles, and by means of a scented magical spell brings to the agitated human spirit a panacea and peace. It brings, too, the land of dreams.”
—Pierre Louÿs

Pierre Louÿs (1870 – 1925) was a French poet and writer renowned for lesbian and classical themes, as well as for explicit erotic works published posthumously. He was a gifted stylist whose pagan texts have a distinctly hypnotic power. In 1896, his first novel Aphrodite became
the most popular and best selling book of its day.

THE NEW PLEASURE & OTHER STORIES
by Pierre Louÿs
Translated from the French and Adapted by G. F. Monkshood**
Classics of Passion series
5.06″ x 7.81″ (12.852 x 19.837 cm)
224 pages, trade paper original
$14.95

___

**pseudonym  of William James Clarke