Mes plus belles nuits d’amour (My Most Beautiful Nights of Love) is one of the early erotic titles illustrated by Klementieff, if indeed the illustrations are by him. They are unsigned, but the style and attention to detail strongly suggests his involvement in this early Éditions Curio publication.

Éditions Curio was established in 1924 by one ‘Charles-Etienne’, pseudonym of the owner of Curio and author of some twenty titillating titles. They were sold mostly through the publisher’s bookshop, Librairie des Curiosités Littéraires, at 14 rue du Renard. Curio stopped publishing in 1935, and some of its titles, including Mes plus belles nuits d’amour, were reissued by Éditions d’Antin.

An English-language edition of Plus belles nuits, My Most Beautiful Nights of Love, appeared in 1928, ‘reserved exclusively for subscribers’, and with the fictional author credited as ‘Mademoiselle Suzy’ rather than the ‘Mademoiselle … ’ of the French edition.

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