Book description
The highly-acclaimed short story collection by the author of
Gordon, the erotic novel banned for indecency in 1966
In The Darts of Cupid, Edith Templeton gives a sweeping and
intimate expos of her century and the lives of the women who lived in
it. The unforgettable title story was celebrated upon its original
publication in The New Yorker for its explicit portrayal of the
relationship between a young British woman and her American superior
in a provincial war office during World War II - a love affair that
lasted only two nights but changed the narrator's life forever, and is
still haunting today. Other stories take us from the tumbledown
glamour of a Bohemian castle between the wars to an apartment on the
coast of Italy in the 1990s, where a rich widow's decision to sell her
husband's prized silver becomes a bewitching tale of longing.
Whatever the period, Templeton addresses the truth about female
passion with a forthright gaze that is rare for any age.
'[Templeton's stories] make the flesh tingle' Observer
'Templeton's characters are not passive or self-doubting. Their
pleasure in sexual submission is a mark of their toughness: they can
take what their men give them' The New York Times
'Dark, compelling and invigoratingly unsettling' Sunday Times
Edith Templeton was born in Prague in 1916 and spent much of her
childhood in a castle in the Bohemian countryside. Her short stories
began to appear in The New Yorker in the 1950s and caused a
major stir because of their sexual explicitness (these stories are
available in one volume entitled The Darts of Cupid as a
Penguin ebook). Gordon first appeared in 1966 under the
pseudonym Louise Walbrook and was subsequently banned in England and
Germany; it was then pirated around the world, appearing under various
titles. In 2001, Edith Templeton agreed to publish the novel, with its
original title, under her own name. She died in 2006.
Edith Templeton was born in Prague in 1916 and spent much of her
childhood in a castle in the Bohemian countryside. She was educated at
the French lyc e in Prague and left the city in 1938 to marry an
Englishman. Her short stories began to appear in The New Yorker
in the 1950s and caused a major stir because of their sexual
explicitness (these stories are available in one volume entitled
The Darts of Cupid as a Penguin ebook).
Gordon first appeared in 1966 under the pseudonym Louise
Walbrook and was subsequently banned in England and Germany; it was
then pirated around the world, appearing under various titles. In
2001, Edith Templeton agreed to publish the novel, with its original
title, under her own name. She died in 2006.
