Aphrodite: Ancient Manners (Forgotten Books)

On the heels of Bilitis, Pierre Louys published his first novel, Aphrodite (Moeurs Antiques) in 1896. It was a bestseller, selling 350,000 copies, sealing Louys' reputation as a popular author of erotic literature.

Set in Ptolemaic Alexandria, at a much later date than Bilitis, Aphrodite is as much a love story as a crime story. Louys' decadent, sensual vision of Egypt in classical times is a jeweled setting for a story of transgressive love. The sculptor Demetrios, the favorite of Queen Berenice, falls for a well-to-do courtesan, Chrysis. Much of the story is set in the world of the courtesans, a realm of beauty, luxury, sapphic indulgence, and some dark shadows as well. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)

About the Author

Pierre Louys (1870 - 1925)
Pierre Louys (December 10, 1870 - June 6, 1925) was a French poet and Romantic writer, most renowned for lesbian and classical themes in some of his writings. He is known as a writer who expressed pagan sensuality with stylistic perfection. Pierre Louys was born Pierre Louis on December 10, 1870 in Ghent, Belgium, but moved to France where he would spend the rest of his life. He studied at the Ecole Alsacienne in Paris, and there he developed a close friendship with a future Nobel Prize winner and champion of homosexual rights, Andre Gide. In the 1890s, he became a friend of the noted English dramatist and homosexual, Oscar Wilde. Although heterosexual, Louys enjoyed entree into homosexual circles.

Louys started writing his first erotic texts at the age of 18, at which point he developed an interest in the Parnassian and Symbolist schools of writing.

In 1891, Louys helped found a literary review, La Conque, where he proceeded to publish Astarte- an early collection of erotic verse already