"Les Tableaux Vivants" is a rare ensemble of Victorian era erotica. With its 15 shorts stories, we find scenes of the most libidinous kind, all told in a wonderfully poetic prose which adds a decadent piquancy to the text.

Anonymously written in 1870, and translated from the original French by the infamous Charles Carrington in 1890, this tome makes a fine edition to any collection of the once-forbidden.

Shortly before the French revolution of 1789 our Captain and narrator's Dragoon regiment kept garrison in the city of Le Mans. The officers, being taken in by some of the noblest and richest of houses of the city, soon began to play that age old game of cuckoldry, playing their patrons for fools as the rakes took the lewdest of liberties with their wives.

Perhaps more scandalous was the fact that the women, ignored and thus unsatisfied by said husbands, desperate for the basest of physical fulfilments, positively welcomed our officers with open legs and a passion unbridled. Our Captain...

Inspired by the presumed poison of De Sade's violent and licentious masterworks 'Justine' and 'Juliette', Nicolas-Edme Retif (also known as Retif de la Bretonne) wrote this antidote; a work which morally defends the debauchery therein graphically depicted and shows us that even the most libidinous of lifestyles can have a happy ending.

Enter Cupidonnet and Madeline; siblings with a singular passion for all manner of deed and device. Amongst maids, Marquesses, Lords, and lawyers, the pair will seek pleasures unparalleled and spend profusely therefrom. Front and back, all will saviour the...

At last, the chemise flew over her head, and Lady Flashington remained almost naked, shivering with fright and horror, in the arms of a lustful valet, who was exploring every corner of her charms without his master thinking of stopping him. He pulled off her shoes, then her pearl-grey silk stockings, and when the noble lady was as naked as when she was born, and scarlet with shame, and almost dead with fright, John laid her across his knees, the backside uppermost, and with his muscular hand reddened the white globes, which jumped furiously at every fresh blow.

The...