What are some classic smut stories that people should read?

[YmaOHyd]

aargh! most inept writing. if I'd came something like that in an "erotic" story on lit, I'd stop reading. out of sheer boredom, don't be mistaken.

I'd be stunned that someone had so accurately managed to capture the fictional styles of the 1860s, when that piece was written.

 

[SimonDoom]

I switched right over to Amazon and ordered Story of the Eye.

I did too! Thanks to @KittyOfSteele for the recommendation.

 

[MrStill]

I don't think these have been mentioned:
If you loved The Story of O, you'll like Vanessa Duries' The Ties That Bind (1995). A young French student meets an experienced Sadist who knows how to give her what she wants.
And Penny Birch's Penny In Harness (1998) had me at least believing that the English countryside was full of farms where the main occupation was training pony-girls.

 

[ronde]

Two in my collection are:

"The Memoirs of Josephine Mutzenbacher", Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. Anonymous (Vol. 1 supposedly ghost-written by Felix Salten. Vol.2 author is possibly Felix Salten, but not verified as such)
"Mystere D'Amour", Anne-Marie Villefranche

 

[joy_of_cooking]

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki, about a Japanese man who attempts to groom a beautiful girl (and it's just straight-up grooming; the novel's clear about that) into being his perfect Westernized wife; she manipulates his growing obsession into enslavement. It's an allegorical work about traditional Japan and the allure and rapacity of Western culture and ideas.

If you're interested in stuff like that, check out The Domestic Yapoo. This site has translated the first book and most of the second into English:

https://nelliefeathers.wordpress.com/the-domestic-yapoo/

It is similarly an extremely strange and disturbing (to my modern, non Japanese sensibilities) attempt to reckon with the country's then-recent humiliation at the hands of Western powers by imagining a future where white people have established a race based chattel slavery where Japanese people are no longer regarded as human but rather living raw material for psychological conditioning and surgical modification into domestic appliances. Extremely non con, obviously, with lots of raceplay, mutilation, and scat.

I tried to read it as a historical thing and noped out after skimming a chapter or two. You may have a stronger stomach.

 

[taytay4eva]

I'd be stunned that someone had so accurately managed to capture the fictional styles of the 1860s, when that piece was written.

I wish I could load up a period-accurate dictionary for when I wrote period pieces that didn't let me use modern words

 

[YmaOHyd]

I tried to read it as a historical thing and noped out after skimming a chapter or two. You may have a stronger stomach.

I do not!

 

[Rob_Royale]

The Sleeping Beauty series by A.N. Roquelaure/ Anne Rice was my intro to erotica and my wife and I dabbled in it for a little while from the shelf behind the curtain in our favorite book swap, but I can't recall anything else we enjoyed as much.

 

[StillStunned]

I'd be stunned that someone had so accurately managed to capture the fictional styles of the 1860s, when that piece was written.

I did my best with The Countesses of Tannensdal. Set in 1869.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I wish I could load up a period-accurate dictionary for when I wrote period pieces that didn't let me use modern words

The hard part is words that existed in the relevant period but were used differently to how they are today.

 

[Writer61]

Fanny Hill (already mentioned) was the first thing that came to my mind.

I think I would include Lady Chatterley's Lover.

 

[Writer61]

I wish I could load up a period-accurate dictionary for when I wrote period pieces that didn't let me use modern words

Recently, while writing a piece set in the 1920s, I found a couple of sites that provided slang appropriate to the period.

 

[AG31]

Fanny Hill (already mentioned) was the first thing that came to my mind.

I think I would include Lady Chatterley's Lover.

I recently re-read it, after having first read it soon after it was un-banned in the U.S. I was surprised at how little sex there was in it, and not particularly riveting sex. The power of the book depends on the social mores it was challenging, I think.

 

[Writer61]

I recently re-read it, after having first read it soon after it was un-banned in the U.S. I was surprised at how little sex there was in it, and not particularly riveting sex. The power of the book depends on the social mores it was challenging, I think.

That is a fair comment.

 

[AG31]

George Bataille's 'Story of the Eye' remains as the best erotica I've read so far. Thought provoking, and also revolting. Eerily seductive, and also absolutely disgusting. It strikes awe, and also rips your heart out while it still beats. It's the worst book you'll ever read, but it's also the best book you'll ever read. If you're into transgressive fiction, or the philosophy of transgression, Story of the Eye is a treasure trove. Definitely not meant to titillate, and in the original French, the book has a lot of puns. I was fortunate enough to read an edition that had the Hans Bellmer illustrations, which are also quite exquisite to look at. That book is a piece of art to me, and no erotica I've read has beat it just yet.

In second place I have the classic Henry Miller's 'Tropic of Cancer,' or what I like to call "that one novel that had no business on being so damn relatable." Again, that's not a novel, it's a work of art, and I hold it dear to my heart because it saved me in some of my darkest moments of last year. It doesn't have as much sex by today's standards for erotica, but honestly it was never about sex. It was all about a life of contradictions, uncertainty, and decay, a life that somehow I feel that I, and many other struggling artists, have. Just way too real to me that I honestly felt bad for finishing reading it.

Those are my best two. 'Fanny Hill' is fun (especially by the amount of names Cleland has come up with for a penis), and while reading it can give you a lot of headaches because this wasn't something meant to be published originally, I think 'My Secret Life' is more interesting than Fanny Hill. I don't know if it is because it's the real account of a Victorian gentleman, or because there were some far much more interesting characters that he met that got me more invested into the story, but I'd rather read My Secret Life again than go for Fanny Hill again.

Also, 'Juliette.' I'm sorry, but you can't leave Justine's twin sister out of this. She has her own take too!

Remarkable. I wanted to liken it to another bit of French erotica, but I can't remember the name. I do believe it was included in my book of The Image, by de Berg or The Story of O, but it's not in the first and I can't find the second. It, too, involved an adolescent boy and girl discovering sex, and turning their attentions to another girl.

 

[AG31]

The Image by Jeanne de Berg

 

[AG31]

Were any of the stories listed here based on vanilla sex? I didn't spot any. If not, how come?

Edit: Lady Chatterley's Lover

 

[AG31]

I was just re-introduced to The Pornographic Imagination by Susan Sonntag. It's not, itself, pornography, but it's certainly worth a read by folks who are following this thread.

 

[JTass]

Both of my recommendations have been mentioned in previous posts, so I'll just confirm that The Autobiography of a Flea by Anonymous and the Sleeping Beauty series by A.N. Roquelare (pseudonym of Anne Rice) are fantastic.

 

[The_inspector_and_the_fish]

As a teenager I read several books from the Intimate Memoirs of Dame Jenny Everleigh series. Absolutely cracking erotica set in Victorian England