The Prelude to Teleny (1899) is an erotic novel published anonymously, yet often attributed to Irish playwright Oscar Wilde. A loosely related prequel to the novel Teleny (1893), which is considered one of the first works of fiction to openly depict homosexuality, The Prelude to Teleny is the story of a young girl’s sexual awakening and subsequent downfall, as well as of the son she bears.  “My childhood was a very dull one. I am hardly certain whether I remember my mother or not, for I was only about two years old when she died. By an effort it seems to me that I can recollect having been taken into a dark hushed room, where she was asleep—of having been lifted on a couch and made to kiss her. Her face was as white as marble, seemed quite as cold; so that the contact of my warm lips with that clammy flesh produced an indelible impression upon me.” Before she was reduced to this lifeless state, Camille Des Grieux was a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. On a sultry night in the south of France, she has her first sexual experience with a strange young drifter. Unsure if this was a real or just an intense dream, she wakes in the morning with a strange new sensation, and soon finds evidence of another’s presence all around her room. Filled with brief scenes of romance and lust between its insatiable cast of characters, The Prelude to Teleny is an erotic novel that continues to entertain, shock, and surprise over a century after it was published. This edition of The Prelude to Teleny is a classic work of Victorian erotica reimagined for modern readers.

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