Grushenka — Anonymous

This English written pastiche of erotica set in Russia recounts the life of a young peasant girl sold into servitude to Princess Katerina. What Grushenka doesn't know, however, it that the palace of Prince Alexey Sokolow is one where maids and serfs are paired to fornicate in controlled conditions and often under the wanton eyes of the Royals.

It is not long before our protagonist's reticence is forgotten; the naive girl overcome by the sheer ecstasy of her many lascivious encounters. Lost to her new-found lust, and developing a talent for all deeds and devices sexual, she will rise from rags to riches as a high-class brothel owner, where she will turn the birch and rod and palm to those young women that were once as she was.

Artistic license once promoted this work compiled from the archived files of the Russian secret police. Some claim that the piece was a creation of a 1930's Hollywood director. But though the prominence of this piece, anonymously written in 1933, will continue to broke theories as to its authorship, there is no doubt that the graphic prose describing all manner of libidinous scenes therein equals that of those Victorian and Edwardian works which came before. Grushenka, or; Three Times a Woman is a worthy addition to any collection of the once-banned.