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 Lorde52Audre 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 Country59James Baldwin · 1962
- The Annotated Lolita59Vladimir Nabokov · 1991
- Tipping the Velvet59Sarah Waters · 1998
- The Well of Loneliness59Radclyffe Hall · 1928
- Querelle59Jean Genet · 1953
- A Boy's Own Story59Edmund White · 1982
- The Swimming-Pool Library59Alan Hollinghurst · 1988
- Cleanness59Garth Greenwell · 2020
- On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous59Ocean Vuong · 2019
- Fear of Flying59Erica Jong · 1973
- The Pisces59Melissa Broder · 2018
- Chéri and The Last of Chéri59Colette · 1920
- The Pillar of Salt59Albert Memmi · 1953
- Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity59Julia Serano · 2007
- The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses)53Apuleius · 2
- Memoirs of Fanny Hill59John Cleland · 1749
- My Life and Loves59Frank Harris · 1922
- Comrade Loves of the Samurai59Ihara Saikaku · 1972
- Laura Middleton; Her Brother and Her Lover52Anonymous
- Bad Behavior59Mary Gaitskill · 1988
- House of Holes: A Book of Raunch59Nicholson Baker · 2011
- The Best American Erotica 200159Susie Bright (editor) · 2001
- Best Erotic Romance52