10 Erotic Literary Fiction Books That Prove Their Value

Fun fact: Fanny is inspired by Fanny Hill, the 1748 erotic novel which would eventually become the subject of a landmark obscenity ruling in 1963.

Discovered on the doorstep of a country estate in Wiltshire, England, young Fanny is raised by her adoptive parents, Lord and Lady Bellars. She dreams of becoming an epic poet but she is declared "ruined" after she is ravished by her cad of a stepfather. 

Fleeing to London, Fanny falls in with the outsiders of the city, the witches and highwaymen who ignore the rules of the world in favor of seeking their own fortunes. For Fanny, finding her best life means spending time in a brothel and a series of adventures that are most unladylike.

When Lady Chatterley's Lover was first released in 1928, it inspired a firestorm of controversy and faced one of the most heated censorship battles in British history. It was banned as pornography for decades, not receiving an official release until 1960. Now, it's considered a classic. 

Lady Chatterley is unhappily married to a rich man whose war injuries mean he can never satisfy her. Her desperation leads her to take a lover, the working-class groundsman who ignites within her a passion she never before thought possible.

For many, the French-born American writer Anaïs Nin is the queen of erotic literature (though she wrote non-erotic works, too). Her journals, which detailed her many affairs and romances, became famous, while her erotic stories redefined the form. 

Her second collection of erotica, Little Birds, was published posthumously. Its 13 stories tackle all manner of provocations and taboos, and reveal Nin’s incredible talent for depicting the unspoken desires of women. 

Phillip Dean is traveling Europe after dropping out of Yale, wandering aimlessly across the continent in a borrowed car with little money, all in the hope of finding some kind of peace or purpose. 

When he stops for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant who instantly fascinates him. They fall into a sexual affair and it is through Anne-Marie that Phillip finds something that will change his life.

Ya'arah is a graduate student living in Jerusalem with her kind—if dull—husband. When she meets Aryeh, her father's best friend, she is simultaneously attracted to and repelled by him. Yet she cannot help herself from falling into an all-consuming affair with him. 

The more she gives herself to Aryeh, the more she loses of her old life. She should choose herself, her husband and career over him, but Aryeh is tough to ignore, and her addiction becomes toxic.

Maggie has been married for 20 years to Thomas. They have two children and live a perfectly normal life in Nashville. But Maggie craves something more, and soon she is drawn into a passionate affair with the poet James. 

She still loves Thomas and is fiercely committed to her family, but she cannot deny the connection she feels with Janes, a man who stimulates her intellectually as much as physically. The more time they spend together, the more difficult they find it to disentangle themselves from one another and return to their normal lives.

Nora and Franny are sisters who seem like polar opposites to the rest of the world. After Franny was brutally murdered, Nora reads her diaries in desperate hope of finding answers. What they reveal is a dark double life, a secret sadomasochistic affair with a mysterious professor known only as M. 

Nora vows to seek justice for the sister she never really knew and undertakes a daring scheme to seduce this mysterious M and find out the truth. Instead, she finds herself falling under the thrall of the same man who seduced Franny, and now history is at risk of repeating itself.

From the outside, Felix Cramer seems to have it all: a successful career as an author, fame, money, and his devoted wife Elizabeth. But he's grown bored with it all and seeks thrills through a series of affairs. Gripped by the feeling that his best days are behind him, Felix becomes captivated by the one person he should never covet: His best friend's step-daughter, Sally. 

Felix loves Elizabeth but lusts after Sally, and after Sally fears she might be pregnant, the pair must figure out how to deal with the mistakes caused by their untethered desires. For Felix, Sally, and those they love most, the price may be higher than they could ever imagine.

Initially published under the alias Melissa P., the Italian erotica 100 colpi di spazzola prima di andare a dormire was loosely based on the experiences of its author, Melissa Panarello. 

Melissa begins her diary a virgin, a Sicilian teenage girl who wants to discover herself beyond the confines of her quiet life. A stormy affair with an older man leads her to delve head-first into a world of profound eroticism. She has encounters with parters of all kinds, not bound by age, gender, or sexuality, and experiments with kink and group sex that pushes her to her utmost limits. Nobody in her life knows what Melissa is up to: only the pages of her diary reveal the truth.

The bride is a young woman, barely out of childhood, who has returned home to Italy from Argentina. She is betrothed to the Son, the heir of a noble family, and she is expected to mold herself into the ideal wife for him. She is to make her preparations for marriage at the grand villa of her future in-laws, a place where the atmosphere is unnerving and nothing is quite what it seems. 

The family is obsessed with night and death, and they have grand plans to "initiate" the Bride into their fold. While they wait for the Son to arrive, the family casts its spell on the naive young Bride.