Locus Elm Press Libri

Venus in Furs describes the obsessions of Severin von Kusiemski, a European nobleman who desires to be enslaved to a woman. Severin finds his ideal of voluptuous cruelty in the merciless Wanda von Dunajew. This is a passionate and powerful portrayal of one man's struggle to enlighten and instruct himself and others in the realm of desire. Published in 1870, the novel gained notoriety and a degree of immortality for its author when the word "masochism"—derived from his name—entered the vocabulary of psychiatry. This remains a classic literary statement on sexual submission and control. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Lady Pokingham recounts the life of Beatrice, a headstrong and inquisitive young woman who delights in nothing more than giving over all her senses in being gamahuched, tribbed, taken, dominated, and chastised by man and woman in like manner. But it is in being married to Lord Crim-Con that she will experience the kind of sexual awakening that her experiences thus far had only eluded to. This rake of educates our heroin in many a manner of deed and device all the while crying out the most licentious of obscenities to her. Sharing her with friends, acquaintances and servant, Lord Crim-Con succeeds in corrupting Beatrice further as she partakes in menage-a-trois and much more. This is perhaps one of the more uncompromising tales to come from the pages of the notorious Victorian Erotic periodical The Pearl, anonymously written and published by William Lazenby between 1879-1880, and will sure to shock and delight in equal measure readers now as it did over one-hundred years ago.