Banned Romance Books Written by Women: Chapbook No. 4
While we are waiting for the wood engravings to come back for the final four illustrations of Victoria: A Bedside Table Tale, progress has been made on the companion project to the book, #4 in the Chapbook Series.
The limited edition chapbook will come with a deck of 52 cards featuring quotes and illustrations of the featured books. The deck is for readers to have on their bedside table and to add to their TBR (to-be-read) pile. The heroine in Victoria explores three banned books sitting on her bedside table. Those adventures are banned books written by men (D.H. Lawrence, Marquis de Sade, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch). We wanted this chapbook to focus on romance books written by women that have been banned or censored. There are plenty to choose from.
At first blush, this sounded like an easy project to pull together. As research ensued and many rabbit holes were jumped down, we realized that the suppression of women’s writing in various countries and time periods (ex. Russian women authors until the late 19th Century) made it a challenge to diversify the card deck to create a fuller representation of women’s romantic and sexual experiences for our readers. The usual suspects from Western Literature are in the deck: Anaïs Nin, Erica Jong, Simone de Beauvoir, Kate Chopin, Judy Blume, Jane Austin, Emmanuelle Arsan, Anne Cécile Desclos (writing as Pauline Réage), Anne Bannon, etc.
Diving further into world literature, we added Eileen Chang, Lady Nijo, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Laura Esquivel, Delmira Agustini, Anastasiia Alekseevna Verbitskaia, and many more. Along the way, we learned some interesting historical facts about why it was so hard to find women authors in certain countries and cultures, and also about censorship, obscenity laws, and the double standards placed on women authors trying to publish (in some cases, in any genre, much less romance or erotica). The chapbook will provide a bibliography from this research.
We used illustrations published in editions of the books, such as wood engravings or line drawings, or cover art where it was possible to adapt it for fine press printing. We tried to also find illustrations that matched the time-periods during which these women were writing or where we found interesting connections between the writers and other women illustrators at the time. For example, one fun discovery was that the poetry of Mina Loy was illustrated by Clara Tice. Both women were part of the Greenwich Village Bohemian in the 1910s and 20s and both were pushing the limits with their erotic poetry and drawing.
The backs of the cards feature four illustrations adapted from cover art designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman, an American artist and book cover designer. She was prolific with her book cover designs (over 200) starting around 1884. Fans of her work will recognize her style which was a big part of the American Arts and Crafts Movement.
The chapbook that comes with the deck of cards will contain brief statements about the history of these women, their publications, and details about the illustrations. Stay tuned, and please consider subscribing to the Press on our Patreon if you want to receive bi-monthly handmade items from the press.
