Erotic Print Society

This is the second volume of a pair of Erotic Print Society publications which draw on the wealth of Victorian photographic erotica that was the result of the sudden popularisation of photography at the time, together with the accompanying demand of the middle classes for affordable erotic images. The two volumes present superb images of naked women from different collections, and in my opinion this second volume is marginally the better of the two. Such materials provide an entertaining insight into the sexual attitudes of the times, not least because the photographic subjects are probably drawn from the commercial underworld of sex. The images include poses which involve women on their own and with both female and male partners, and they show an honesty in erotic activities which is still unmatched today. Many of the images shown are accompanied with brief extracts from contemporary erotic fiction. As with all EPS publications this volume is superbly and authoritatively produced, a gem in the diadem of historical erotica.… (mais)

There are many ways of selecting gems from the literature, history and practices of sex, and this book represents one of the more attractive and entertaining possibilities. Arranged as a carefully selective A-to-Z of erotica, covering artistic images, literature and comment, it may be opened at any page to display sex in all its glory, in styles varying from titillation to philosophical musings, all examined in a light-hearted manner. It is a substantial book that takes itself seriously in its quest for erudition, and is a excellent complement to a collector's private library.… (mais)

This was the first in a planned series on Great British Erotic Art from the Erotic Print Society, cut short by the closure of their presses after only two volumes, the second being a collection of the Femdom art of Sardax. The title is somewhat misleading, suggesting BDSM shenanigans which are about the only thing our cover girl doesn't get up to. It's actually a donnish joke - a pseudo-academic way of referring to the unknown artist behind a cache of a erotic drawings featuring the College Nurse character.

Nothing seems to be known about the origin of the drawings, but the style and fashions suggest the mid-twentieth century, and they depict, in loving detail, the erotic adventures of a buxom nurse employed at a boy's boarding school. The Erotic Print Society commissioned a short novel to pull the images and a few fragments of text into a coherent whole. It's smutty, sexy fun, entirely in keeping with the pictures, but the real attraction is on the cover: The Nurse herself, a voluptuous creature hapless in the grip of her own uncontrollable desires. Dozens of elegant pencil drawings celebrate her creamy thighs, bounteous breasts and truly stupendous derriere, in and out of starched uniforms, stockings and the kind of elasticated foundation garments that now seem so exquisitely perverse. She is seen in abandoned congress with an Ealing comedy cast of teachers, vicars and some very advanced sixth-form students.

It's all very British, deliciously guilty and rude, and quite clearly the product of an obsessively detailed fantasy life. One wonders if there was, perhaps, once a real Nurse, worshipped from afar by a horny but talented public schoolboy, or a frustrated art teacher. We'll never know, but fantasy or not, her charms are immortalised forever in this delightful little volume, for lovers of the fuller figure everywhere. Ooh, matron!… (mais)