Julie, ou J’ai sauvé ma rose, Madame de C*** [Félicité Choiseul-Meuse] (Se trouve chez tous les Libraires Anglais, 1882)
8″ x 5.25″, 2 vol. bound together, 166pp 183pp, half calf on marbled boards, original wraps bound within, red label with gilt titles on spine, just good condition, boards intact, binding good, ribbon intact, major scuffing and bumping to the spine and rubbing to the boards.
Felicite de Choiseul-Meuse wrote approximately twenty-seven novels from 1797 to 1824. Writings are sometimes identified by pseudonyms and acronyms: LFDLC; Emilia P ***, Madame de C *** , etc.. Her 1807 novel “Julie, ou j’ai sauvé ma rose” [Julie, or I saved my rose] is widely considered the first erotic novel written by a woman. It is more appropriately translated as “how I kept my cherry” for it tells the tale of a young woman who lets her lovers fondle her all they want, but will not allow penetration until she finds the right man and marries him. The work was condemned as obscene and its destruction ordered by the Cour royale de Paris on August 5, 1828. Excerpt: “I tasted in his arms unspeakable pleasures. Deadened by pleasure, then revived by an even more delirious pleasure, I made the object of happiness almost as happy as I was myself; and yet, true to my system, I made sure that he did not harvest the rose.”
