The Amatory Adventures of The Lustful Turk | or | Lascivious Scenes from a Harem | faithfully and vividly depicted in a series of letters from a young and beautiful English lady to her cousin in England, Anonymous (“Paris: Privately Printed, 1904” [this is a later facsimile printing, np nd])
The Lustful Turk, or Lascivious Scenes from a Harem is a pre-Victorian British erotic epistolary novel first published anonymously in 1828. (although this edition says it is “signed 10th of April, 1868) However, it was not widely known or circulated until the 1893 edition. The novel consists largely of a series of letters written by its heroine, Emily Barlow, to her friend, Sylvia Carey. When Emily sails from England for India in June 1814 her ship is attacked by Moorish pirates and she is taken to the harem of Ali, Dey of Algiers. The Dey rapes her and subjects her to his will, awakening her sexual passions. Emily’s debasement continues when the Dey insists on anal sex, arousing the horror of her correspondent Sylvia, who expresses her indignation at the Dey’s behaviour, in a letter that the latter intercepts. Annoyed at her attitude, the Dey arranges for Sylvia to be abducted and brought to the slave market of Algiers. After an elaborate charade in which the Dey pretends to be a sympathetic Frenchman, bidding to save her from sexual slavery, and engaging her in a fake marriage, he deflowers her and awakens her sexuality, as he had done with Emily. Revealing his true identity the Dey enjoys both girls together. This sexual idyll is eventually terminated when a new addition to harem objects to anal rape and cuts off the Dey’s penis with a knife, and then commits suicide. Seemingly unfazed by this, the Dey has “his lost members preserved in spirits of wine in glass vases” which he presents to Emily and Sylvia, sending them back to England with these tokens of his affection. The novel also incorporates interpolated stories concerning the erotic misadventures of three other girls abducted into the harem and enlarges on the fate of Emily’s maid Eliza who, presented by the Dey to Muzra, Bey of Tunis, is bound, flogged and raped in turn.
