Two tales, past and present, comprise this first volume in a collection of anthologies describing the fall to service under the heel of the female by men brought low by the vicissitudes of fate and their own inner weakness.Ms Rachilde’s “Manservant” is our first misadventure and describes how a dissolute English gentleman in the 1920's finds himself out of options after his inheritance has been squandered and his debts – including one to a vengeful and homicidal underworld figure -...

With "Domestic Instruction", we are brought two fantasy female-led tales in the retro-style, dealing with the subject of men taken into domestic service by women.Be the reasoning of those men financial desperation or a simple but overpowering need to be near the objects of their affections.We open with Ms Rachilde's "Manservant"; as a dissolute English gentleman in the 1920's finds himself out of options after his inheritance has been squandered and his debts – including on...

A dissolute English gentleman in the 1920's finds himself out of options after his inheritance has been squandered and his debts have become unsustainable.All options but one, that is.Which is...?To become the full-time live-in Manservant to a trio of financially sound and genteel ladies who would happen to enjoy nothing more than having their own captive male.Femdom fiction from SFPG.ADULT MATERIAL

From Rachilde, Queen of the Decadents, comes a novel set in Belle Époque Paris about a passionate young woman who lives for love. Laure Lordès escapes her hometown amid scandal, following her lover to the city to live like a pet in a gilded cage. But when a feral kitten touches Laure's heart and she begins to change, she learns that being true to herself and her young charge is harder than she ever imagined. First published in 1893 by Rachilde-a fiercely independent author who explored pro...

Two female-led fantasies, describing early – and draconian – examples of feminism from times past, open with Ezra Bedford's "The Position".Read on, as an unjustly disgraced man., recently released from prison, applies in his desperation for the position of a live-in secretary at a London Home… This after reading a most curious advertisement… A reading and an application that will change his life and prove more curious than he thought… And especially when the man he thinks will be e...

"An innocent but curious heroine who discovers the extent of human depravity is the core of much of Rachilde's fiction, and the present novel is no exception."-Melanie C. HawthorneAmid the rose gardens of her father's farm, beautiful Marguerite Davenel is weary of her supposedly charmed life. When she encounters charismatic Fulbert, an anarchist who despises the bourgeois world that she represents, he upends the very foundations of her existence. As their complicated attrac...

Poisoned cigars, seductive apparitions, minds and empires in the last of their decline and the most notorious kiss in dramatic history – decadent plays challenged the moral as much as the dramatic imagination of their own day, and continue to probe horizons of taste and the possibilities of stagecraft.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many writers reacted to urban modernity by embracing decadent themes and styles, and dramatists were no exception. Decadenc...

When the rich and well-connected Raoule de Vénérande becomes enamored of Jacques Silvert, a poor young man who makes artificial flowers for a living, she turns him into her mistress and eventually into her wife. Raoule's suitor, a cigar-smoking former hussar officer, becomes an accomplice in the complications that ensue.

**The award-winning, nationally bestselling translation, by Lydia Davis, of one of the world’s most celebrated novels“The best English version by far, because its deadpan reminds us that the book is both a great realist novel and a satire of realism.” —Merve Emre, The New Yorker**Emma Bovary is the original desperate housewife. Beautiful but bored, she spends lavishly on clothes and on her home and embarks on two disappointing affairs in an effort to make her life ...

'I read it for the first time when I was seventeen and loved every page. I find its depiction of a golden time and place just as poignant now as I did then' Nick HornbyThe Lost Estate is Robin Buss's translation of Henri Alain-Fournier's poignant study of lost love, Le Grand Meaulnes.When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes ...

For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and it...

For daring to peer into the heart of an adulteress and enumerate its contents with profound dispassion, the author of Madame Bovary was tried for "offenses against morality and religion." What shocks us today about Flaubert's devastatingly realized tale of a young woman destroyed by the reckless pursuit of her romantic dreams is its pure artistry: the poise of its narrative structure, the opulence of its prose (marvelously captured in the English translation of Francis Steegmuller), and it...