The School of Women

The School of Women, by Nicolas Chorier (AD 1612-1692), is an erotic novel written and published in the mid to late 17th century France. It has a convoluted history, much of it made up: Luisa Sigea, a female Spanish poet, had purportedly written the original in Spanish (Sotadic Satire on the Mysteries of Love and Venus); later Johannes Meursius, a Dutch classicist, purportedly translated it into Latin (Elegantiæ Latini Sermonis...). From there, it made its way into French and then English, multiple times. This translation in English, from the French, contains the first 5 of 7 dialogs between two young women protagonists, Tullie and her younger companion, Octavie. The plot is simple: Tullie, the more experienced of the two women, has been asked by Octavie¿s mother to instruct her daughter on how best to satisfy her future husband in bed. Unsurprisingly, the dialogs themselves take place in bed. It¿s a coming of age story of sorts for Octavie, and a paean to tribadism as well as to the heterosexual love between a man and his wife. Very graphic in nature, - if written today, it might have had a subtitle of "How to please your man in bed, while practicing on a woman." Highly erotic - it is definitely not a book for children, and may not be a book for some adults even.