The Erotic Canon
Curated by editorial30 works
The literature of desire and the erotic-as-power lineage — from Nin's commissioned collections and Bataille's theory through Audre Lorde's Uses of the Erotic to contemporary witness. Read for what eros names that nothing else does; held with frame, never as performance. Includes the canon's hardest cases.
- The Selected Works of Audre Lorde48Audre Lorde
- Delta of Venus89Anaïs Nin · 1977
- Little Birds86Anaïs Nin · 1979
- The Argonauts92Maggie Nelson · 2015
- Pleasure Activism88adrienne maree brown · 2017
- Erotism: Death and Sensuality74Georges Bataille · 1957
- Tropic of Cancer84Henry Miller · 1934
- Another Country55James Baldwin · 1962
- The Annotated Lolita55Vladimir Nabokov · 1991
- Tipping the Velvet57Sarah Waters · 1998
- The Well of Loneliness55Radclyffe Hall · 1928
- Querelle55Jean Genet · 1953
- A Boy's Own Story55Edmund White · 1982
- The Swimming-Pool Library55Alan Hollinghurst · 1988
- Cleanness57Garth Greenwell · 2020
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous55Ocean Vuong · 2019
- Fear of Flying57Erica Jong · 1973
- The Pisces55Melissa Broder · 2018
- Chéri and The Last of Chéri55Colette · 1920
- The Pillar of Salt55Albert Memmi · 1953
- Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity55Julia Serano · 2007
- The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)51Apuleius · 2
- Memoirs of Fanny Hill55John Cleland · 1749
- My Life and Loves59Frank Harris · 1922
- Comrade Loves of the Samurai55Ihara Saikaku · 1972
- Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover55Anonymous · 1890
- Bad Behavior57Mary Gaitskill · 1988
- House of Holes: A Book of Raunch55Nicholson Baker · 2011
- The Best American Erotica 200155Susie Bright (editor) · 2001
- Best Erotic Romance48