Yet another of the dozen or so sadomasochistic productions by Jean de la Beuque, almost certainly one of the many noms de plume of Alan Mac Clyde, Miss Cravache, ou les vierges esclaves (Miss Whip or The Slave Virgins) is pure flagellation fantasy with almost no real narrative. Betty, alias Miss Cravache, is the daughter of an American businessman installed in the south-western French region of Corrèze. With the help of her butler and stable master, she specialises in the domination and training of impressionable young girls, including her niece Marthe.

Extracts from the list of contents read ‘Betty’s first spanking …Training of a slave … Nelly trapped … Nelly defeated … Useless resistance … Harsh repression … Terrible threats … Nelly naked … Betty and Nelly at the stranger’s house … Energetic treatment … Betty capitulates … Instruments of sadism … Correction or prison … Marthe naked on the torture bench … Final decisions’.

The Topfer-signed illustrations for Miss Cravache are better than many bearing his name, and in this edition published by Éditions Prima two years after the book’s first edition by Librairie Générale, are well-printed in a pleasing if rather dark sepia.

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