Venus in Furs

<p>Based on Sacher-Masoch’s own erotic adventures in the late 1860s Venus in Furs is a groundbreaking account of mistress-slave roleplay fetishism and mutual seduction. In a health resort in the Carpathian Mountains bookish Severin falls in love with the rich and beautiful widow Wanda. He opens his heart to her sharing the secret of his life: he yearns to be the slave of an abusive goddess wrapped in fur to be beaten and cuckolded. Together they set out to make his fantasy a reality. They travel to Italy in the guise of a tyrannical mistress and her obedient servant. What begins as a game however soon turns deadly serious. The boundaries blur between their public and sexual personas. Wanda develops a taste for blood. <em>Venus in Furs</em> is Sacher-Masoch’s revolutionary attempt to imagine a world without male privilege.<br /><br /><strong>Leopold von Sacher-Masoch</strong> was born in 1836 in Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. A prolific novelist playwright and historian he is best known for his erotic obsession with being flagellated and humiliated by powerful women. In addition to <em>Venus in Furs </em> (1870) Sacher-Masoch’s many works include <em>Don Juan of Kolomea</em> (1865) Female Sultan (1873) and <em>Galician Stories</em> (1875). He died in Lindheim Germany in 1895.</p><p><strong>Matthew Kaiser</strong> is associate professor of English at University of California Merced. He is the author of <em>The World in Play: Portraits of a Victorian Concept </em> (Stanford University Press 2012) and the editor of five books including Alan Dale’s <em>A Marriage Below Zero </em>and Philip Meadows Taylor’s <em>Confessions of a Thug</em>.</p>