The Erotic Anthology.
Subtitle: Sensuality and its side effects probed in pungent short stories by some of the world's greatest writers.
By: Edited by P. H. Porosky.
Series: A Signet book
Publisher: New American Library
Published: October 1972
Place of publication: [New York]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 384
Subjects: Short Stories - Fiction.
Genres: Erotica
First sentence: The lord of Valennes, a pleasant place, of which the castle is not far from the town of Tilhouse, had taken a mean wife, who by reason of taste or antipathy, pleasure or displeasure, health or sickness, allowed her good husband to abstain from those pleasures stipulated for in all contracts of marriage.
Description: SEX FRAMED IN FINE LITERATURE - Acts of lust, love, and violence are made graphic and memorable in this unique collection of erotic stories from the 19th and 20th Centuries selected to reflect the broad spectrum of sexual emotions and behaviour besetting the human condition from youth to age. 

Sex is not obscene in the hands of superb writers.  Their words awaken exquisite sensibilities, evoke tender memories, and spur thought while they titillate and arouse.

Many readers will recognize real life situations in these tales, webbed with a wide array of tumultuous passions, paradoxes, longings, and natural curiosity.  The gusto and humour in the give-and-take of seduction or marriage, the ravages of incompatibility, even racial hatreds arise from the force of man's most overwhelming biological urge.

Swingers, whores, cuckolds, sado-masochists, killers, shrews, fools, innocents, the frigid, and the forlorn parade through these pages as immortal symbols of the strange ways in which our sexual instincts cause us to operate.
Table of contents: title: Introduction by P. H. Porosky
pagenum: ix; title: THE MAID OF TILHOUSE by Honore de Balzac
pagenum: 17; title: A COCK CROWED by Guy de Maupassant
pagenum: 23; title: THE CLERK'S QUEST by George Moore
pagenum: 28; title: THE CHEMIST'S WIFE by Anton Chekhov
pagenum: 33; title: IN THE MODERN VEIN:  AN UNSYMPATHETIC LOVE STORY by H. G. Wells
pagenum: 39; title: MIMI by Arnold Bennett
pagenum: 49; title: THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN by Sherwood Anderson
pagenum: 65; title: AN ENCOUNTER by James Joyce
pagenum: 94; title: THE PRINCESS by D. H. Lawrence
pagenum: 102; title: LOVERS OF THE LAKE by Sean O'Faolain
pagenum: 141; title: THE MAN OF THE WORLD by Frank O'Connor
pagenum: 166; title: DRY SEPTEMBER by William Faulkner
pagenum: 173; title: THE KNIFE OF THE TIMES by William Carlos Williams
pagenum: 184; title: THE INNOCENT by Graham Greene
pagenum: 187; title: GIMPEL THE FOOL by Isaac Bashevis Singer
pagenum: 192; title: THE GIRLS IN THEIR SUMMER DRESSES by Irwin Shaw
pagenum: 206; title: BERTHE by Henry Miller
pagenum: 212; title: WHILE GOING NORTH by James B. Hall
pagenum: 221; title: HAPPY MARRIAGE by R. V. Cassill
pagenum: 228; title: THE MATTRESS BY THE TOMATO PATCH by Tennessee Williams
pagenum: 236; title: LUCY GRANGE by Doris Lessing
pagenum: 246; title: THE TIME OF HER TIME by Norman Mailer
pagenum: 251; title: PINS AND MEDALS by J. P. Donleavy
pagenum: 277; title: THE BAMBOO BED by William Eastlake
pagenum: 279; title: OH, THE WONDER! by Jeremy Larner
pagenum: 285; title: CONTOURS by John Weston
pagenum: 304; title: HOOTERASSING by W. A. Roecker
pagenum: 318; title: OF OUR TIME by Alan Lelchuk
pagenum: 326; title: SWAN FEAST by William Mathes
pagenum: 373