Les délices libertines (Libertine Delights), published by the prolific yet relatively tasteful publisher Maurice Duflou, is one of the more worthwhile clandestine publications of the mid-1930s. Though the illustrations are unattributed, they are of a high quality, and the text, which says it is by ‘Jacqueline de Lansay’, is actually by Johannès Gros, a journalist who knew how to write an entertaining erotic narrative. The illustrations bear the tantalising initials ‘DD’, but nobody has ever come up with a convincing suggestion as to whose name (or pseudonym) they stand for.

Les délices libertines follows Alice’s adventures of sexual awakening from her first masturbatory tinglings to the heights of group sex, all written in an explicit yet poetically sensual style. Here is an extract:

With what joy my heart beat! Was I really still so innocent until then the sight of a beautiful half-naked girl suddenly awoke me to the sensual life? Because, little Alice, you already knew the sweet secrets of sin, the solicitations of erotic imagination, forbidden touching and the naughtiness of peeking under skirts. Though you might have been confused by your lascivious feelings, you did not hesitate to explore the debauchery of your early imagination with your friends. And those disturbing images which occupied your solitude and the silence of your nights, agitating your body in a strange way between the sheets, you allowed to slip into the sin of pleasure. And did your hand not, on a certain day of last month, reveal to you this sensation as so pleasant that it left all your limbs tingling? Opportunity as well as curiosity is the grandmaster of a girls’ education.

Though the title page gives the place of publication as ‘Moncontour, au bonheur des dames’, this is a typical Duflou publication of the period and was published by him in Paris.

We are grateful to Steve Mullins of the Olympia Press website (www.parisolympiapress.com) for these illustrations.