Plume will republish three erotica books that Anne Rice published in the 1980s under the pen name, A.N. Roquelaure.The erotic trilogy revisits the Sleeping Beauty fairytale, imagining that a handsome Prince awakens Beauty to a life of “complete and total enslavement to him.”
Coming on July 11th, books are The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty’s Punishment and Beauty’s Release. Rice also wrote a new preface for the book, defending erotica and talking about the series.
Here’s an excerpt from the preface:
As a feminist, I’m very much supportive of equal rights for women in all walks of life. And that includes for me the right of every woman to write out her sexual fantasies and to read books filled with sexual fantasies that she enjoys. Men have always enjoyed all kinds of pornography. How can it be wrong for women to have the same right? We’re sexual beings! And fantasy is where we can do the things we can’t do in ordinary life. A woman has a right to imagine herself carried away by a handsome prince, and to choose for herself as she writes, the color of his hair and eyes, and imagine his silky voice. She has a right to make him as tall as she wants and as strong as he wants. Why not? Men have always allowed themselves such fantasies.