Anonymous. The Simple Tale of Susan Aked or, Innocence Awakened, Ignorance Dispelled / illustrations by Chris Price (The Scarlet Library). — London: Erotic Print Society, 2002.

Title-page: An Instructive Story | The Simple Tale | of Susan Aked | or | Innocence Awakened | Ignorance Dispelled | ANONYMOUS | with new | illustrations by | CHRIS PRICE | THE SCARLET LIBRARY ||

Description: Hardcover, 215 × 155 mm, black cloth with red lettering to front cover and spine, red dust jacket with black and white lettering, black endpapers, printed on cream wove paper; The Scarlet Library serial design.

Pagination: [1–6] 7–158 [2]; 12 full page colour plates.

Imprint: THE SCARLET LIBRARY | LONDON MMII — The Scarlet Library is an imprint of the Erotic Print Society, EPS, 1 Maddox Street, London W1S 2PZ; Tel. (UK only): 0800 026 25 24; Fax: +44 (0)20 7437 3528; Email: [email protected]; Web: www.scarletlibrary.com or www.eroticprints.org; ISBN: 1-898998-53-1; © 2002 MacHo Ltd., London UK; Printed and bound in Spain by Bookprint, S.L., Barcelona.

Note: Anonymous Victorian erotic novella privately printed in London in 1891 in a limited edition of 250 copies, issued under the full title The Simple Tale of Susan Aked or Innocence Awakened, Ignorance Dispelled: An Instructive Story, presented as a first-person narrative of the moral and physical awakening of its young protagonist Susan Aked: the sixteen-year-old heroine, orphaned after the deaths of her parents, is guided by her cousin Lucia into adult knowledge and experience, later moving to London where the narrative culminates in her integration into a discreet libertine social milieu; characteristic of late nineteenth-century clandestine erotic publishing, the work combines explicit subject matter with a didactic tone on physical relations and reproductive avoidance, and survives chiefly through archival copies and later reprints as a minor example of Victorian underground literature produced for private circulation.