The high point of Eusebi Planas’s artistic career was 1880, when he published Historia de Una Mujer (The Story pf a Woman), published by Barcelona-based Litografía de Joan Aleu, who was one of his most prominent disciples and collaborators. This album was an enormous success and a second edition was made, edited by Trilla y Serra, also from Barcelona. As if that were not enough, it was pirated in its entirety in Buenos Aires using albumen photographs by the photographer Fernando Poch.

The success of Historia de Una Mujer was due in no small part to the implicit eroticism it contained – more textual than visual – in the personal narrative of Clara, its protagonist. Clara ’s story clearly struck a chord with many experience-seeking women – and men – of the period, helped no doubt by the relatively happy ending, where Clara sells all her possessions, abandons the gay life for Christian charity, and ends her days in a comfortable hospice.