The School of Venus

The School of Venus is a major work of late seventeenth-century English libertine erotica. It is a translation of a French work, L’École des Filles, which was first published in 1655. The authorship is uncertain: it has been attributed to Michel Millot and to Jean L’Ange. Like Venus in the Cloister (1683), a translation of Jean Barrin’s Vénus dans le cloître (1683), and Nicolas Chorier’s Satyra Sotadica (1660), which was translated as A Dialogue Between a Married Lady and a Maid (1740) and as The Dialogues of Luisa Sigea (1890), The School of Venus is a whore dialogue – a popular genre in the early modern period representing conversations between a mature, sexually experienced woman and a maiden – and a vehicle for disseminating radical ideas about sex, religion, and the social order. It comprises two dialogues in which Frances instructs her beautiful but inexperienced cousin, Katherine, in the art of sexual pleasure. The text refers to a range of sexual practices but focuses primarily on sexual intercourse between men and women. The language of sex in this book is remarkable for its frankness and obscenity; there are no circumlocutions or euphemisms.

The School of Venus is also known as Lessons in Seduction and as School for Girls.