Sexually inspired images can be found in the earliest human cultures as well as throughout Western and Eastern civilization. The engaging, provocative scope of works picked by editors Charlotte Hill and William Wallace includes paintings from the French and Italian Renaissance, lithographs from fin de siecle Vienna and Paris, French postcards from La Belle Epoque, and contemporary pictures and sculpture. Complementing this gallery of erotic art are such literary delights as the luxuriant poetry of the Romans and the Moguls and the Renaissance ribaldry of Boccaccio and Aretino. The notorious memoirs of Casanova and Frank Harris, the decadent dreams of Charles Baudelaire, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Cocteau, the lustful prose of Henry Miller and D. H. Lawrence, and the anonymous fantasy of The Story of O illuminate the exuberant and joyous aspects of erotica.
An exultant celebration of human sexuality, The Illustrated History of Erotica boxed set presents an intoxicating survey of "forbidden" literature and artworks, guaranteed to appeal to a wide audience of men and women.
