The New Epicurean
The New Epicurean: The Delights of Sex, Facetiously and Philosophically Considered, in Graphic Letters Addressed to Young Ladies of Quality is a Victorian erotic novel published by William Dugdale in 1865 and attributed to Edward Sellon. The novel is falsely dated "1740", and is written as an eighteenth-century pastiche, composed of a series of letters addressed to various young ladies.
The story concerns an English gentleman, named Sir Charles, and his wife Lady Celia, who procures very young girls to their suburban villa, in order to indulge in sex with them. He essentially grooms underage girls into sex. He shows the girls the mating of horses, introducing them to the act. He procures the girls from a local orphanage and some whose parents can't pay for their daughter's upkeep. Charles pays to deflower the girls, the money goes to the owner of the orphanage.
The house is luxuriously furnished and is situated on extensive grounds with an inner secret garden surrounded by high walls to prevent onlookers from observing what takes place there.
The Victorian pornographic bibliographer Henry Spencer Ashbee comments that: "The scenes depicted, many of which are doubtless from the author's own experience, and maybe to a certain extent autobiographical, are remarkable for an ultra-lasciviousness, and a cynicism worthy of the Marquis de Sade".
Further reading
- The New Epicurean & The Adventures of a School Boy: two tales from the Victorian underground - Published in 1969 by Grove Press, New York
- The New Epicurean & The Yellow Room: two Victorian masterpieces in one volume - Published in 1995 by Wordsworth Editions, Ware, England ISBN 1-85326-605-1
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