Erotika Biblion Society

The Autobiography of a Flea , Edward Avery, cover of 1901.

The Erotika Biblion Society ^[1] was a pornographic publishing imprint in Victorian London formed by Harry Sidney Nichols and Leonard Smithers around 1886, with their first publication appearing in 1888.

They formed their name from the nonfiction treatise of the same name, Erotika Biblion (1783), published in Paris before the French Revolution, under the penmanship of the Comte de Mirabeau. ^[2] One of their most notable publications was Teleny, or The Reverse of the Medal , an anonymous product of several authors in which it is speculated that Oscar Wilde collaborated.

The venture ended in 1907, after the death of Smithers. ^[3]

Publications

• VOISENON, [Claude-Henri de Fusée] Abbé de. Fairy Tales. Translated by R. B. Douglas. Illustrated With and Etched Frontispiece by Will Rothenstein. Athens [London] 1895.
• Full Bibliography listed in: Steven Halliwell, The Erotika Biblion Society (The Rivendale Press, 2025).

See also

• List of pornographic book publishers

References

1. Not to be confused with the Erotica Biblion Society of London and New York, a separate publisher with a slightly different spelling.
2. Mirabeau, Honoré (1998). Erotika Biblion. Chevalier de Pierrugues. Chez tous les Libraries.
3. Nelson (2000) p.203

• James G. Nelson, Publisher to the Decadents: Leonard Smithers in the Careers of Beardsley, Wilde, Dowson, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, ISBN   0-271-01974-3 or in England & Europe Rivendale Press ISBN   0-953503-38-0
• Patrick J. Kearney, A history of erotic literature, Macmillan, 1982, ISBN   0-333-34126-0, pp. 151–153
• Jon R. Godsall, The Tangled Web: A Life of Sir Richard Burton, Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2008, ISBN   1-906510-42-3, p. 398
• John Sutherland, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, Stanford University Press, 1990, ISBN   0-8047-1842-3, p. 591.
• Steven Halliwell, The Erotika Biblion Society (The Rivendale Press, 2025).