Though the topics and themes are much the same as American erotica, the British use of English adds a luster to the stories, missing from the vulgar used in America. A young Emily is forced to marry the foppish son of a wealthy landowner to supposedly save her parents from the poorhouse. Caroline is the story of an extraordinary woman - beautiful, strong and mischievous. Putting her looks and wit to good use, the young Caroline seduces her friend Harry and his sister Adelaide. Once married to Harry, and living comfortably with him and Adelaide, Caroline enlarges and enlivens their menage by creating an "academy" for young - and not so young - women requiring in initiation into the rites of love...
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Excerpt:
When I was a child I thought of such lanes as led towards our house, or crossed the countryside around, as ways out of the world into another world. At night I conceived of huge doors closing at the ends of them, of carriages, carts, and hawkers' barrows waiting for the dawn that they might open up again.
Children entertain such mysteries. I have often thought that the world is more real in childhood than obtains when we are older, for in growing older we cloak the world in thought and make it other than it is. A child will say "I," and yet it merges its identity with others and so better enjoys the fruitfulness of all. Upon reaching one's middling years, or long before, there comes a consciousness of conflict in oneself. One wishes to be others and yet not, and is in the very centre of a tug-of-war. So often does one hear another say, "I am not myself today," or they may say, "I do not like myself - oh, would that I could change!" or again (and most often in the case of women), "Tomorrow I shall be different; I shall be more myself; I shall be better than I am today."
I - older now - am both myself and yet another whom I do not know. I have gazed at my reflection in mirrors - many mirrors and in different rooms - and wondered at the being who stared back at me and to whom my only relationship, as I felt, was one of wonderment, a sense of being awkwardly disturbed that I had materialised in quite another guise to what I thought, looked how I did not think I looked, hair tousled where I thought it smooth, an alarm of creases faint upon my brow.
Once, in moment of exquisite terror - such terror as is flavoured by the condiments of deep excitement and a quivering in the very soul - I stood before a mirror in my mother's room, which mirror being on a stand allowed a full length view, and asked myself, "Who am I, then?" So piercing is the question to oneself that my toes curled painfully and I could not bear to meet the blank reflection of my eyes.
Had my mother entered her boudoir then, I believe I might have run to her, though being seventeen I was too old for cuddles. Even so, there were brief occasions when, seemingly for no reason whatever, she would suddenly hug me to her and I would be conscious of the largeness of her breasts and the sweet, melting look in her eyes.
I was more about the house than my father who, when he was not in London on business, would do much shooting and riding. I did not care much for this, but my sisters, Adelaide and Bertha, did and would ride on white stallions which he preferred them to have instead of mares. I knew not why. He taught them to take horse as men do with the saddle in between their legs, my mother objecting and saying it was most unladylike and that she feared our neighbours would see. Often enough in Spring and Summer the three would ride out together after breakfast, not returning until lunchtime, flushed and bright.