''The New Epicurean: The Delights of Sex, Facetiously and Philosophically Considered, in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality'' is a Victorian

erotic novel Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros (passionate, romantic or sexual relationships) intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feeli ...

published by

William Dugdale Sir William Dugdale (12 September 1605 – 10 February 1686) was an English antiquary and herald. As a scholar he was influential in the development of medieval history as an academic subject. Life Dugdale was born at Shustoke, near Colesh ...

in 1865 and attributed to Edward Sellon. The novel is falsely dated "1740", and is written as an eighteenth-century pastiche, composed of a series of letters addressed to various young ladies. The story concerns an English gentleman, named Sir Charles, and his wife Lady Celia, who procure very young girls to their suburban villa, in order to indulge in sex with them. He essentially grooms underage girls into sex. He shows the girls the mating of horses, to introduce them to the act. He procures the girls from a local orphanage and some whose parents can't pay for their daughters upkeep. Charles pays to deflower the girls, the money goes to the owner of the orphanage. The house is luxuriously furnished and is situated in extensive grounds with an inner secret garden surrounded by high walls to prevent onlookers observing what takes place there. The Victorian pornographic bibliographer

Henry Spencer Ashbee Henry Spencer Ashbee (21 April 1834 – 29 July 1900) was a book collector, writer and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. Life ...

comments that: "The scenes depicted, many of which are doubtless from the author's own experience, and may be to a certain extent autobiographical, are remarkable for an ultra-lasciviousness, and a cynicism worthy of the

Marquis de Sade Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade ( ; ; 2 June 1740 – 2 December 1814) was a French writer, libertine, political activist and nobleman best known for his libertine novels and imprisonment for sex crimes, blasphemy and pornography ...

". Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen (1969) ''Erotic Fantasies: A Study of the Sexual Imagination''. New York, Grove Press: 278-85

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:New Epicurean 1865 books English novels British erotic novels Victorian novels Works published anonymously

Further reading

References