La femme: confidences intimes (Woman: Intimate Secrets) is something of a blast from the past. Published eight years after Bécat’s death, with text by the strange Doctor Jacotus Brededin (he of the study of mammaries in The Life of Breasts), it feels more early 1950s than late 1960s, by which time Paris was in the grip of student revolution and sexual emancipation.

Caught in a time warp, these women are at the same time some of Bécat’s best colour engravings coupled with a text which is pseudo-psychological romantic twaddle. Maybe with La femme Éditions de l’Ibis were just in time to catch a dying breed of aging erotic book collectors. On the plus side, the colour reproduction is superb.

La femme: confidences intimes was produced in a limited numbered edition of 700 copies.

We are very grateful to Philippe Isoard of Librairie In Quarto, Marseille, for these illustrations. The In Quarto catalogue can be found here; where you can buy the book if it is still in stock.