The adoption of the words 'erotic', 'eroticism', with the meaning we understand today, is rather placed in the late 19th century, from 1881 onwards, at a time when the liberation of expressive means, their wealth and dissemination led us to the need for classification of literary production.

The term 'erotic' was then registered among the synonyms 'vulgar', 'licentious', 'indecent', 'improper', 'pornographic', etc. One should add the characterization 'a corrupter of moral customs', which is not contemporary but dates back to the Roman Empire, a time when society, solidly structured, begins to oppose anything that threatens its foundations. This designation, which was slightly sidelined during the Middle Ages, would revive with intensity when the Religious Reformation and the 'Catholic Renaissance' in the 17th century would focus on the significance of morals, especially of the customs.

Therefore, although the phrase 'erotic literature' is modern, the issue is much older, although precise dating is challenging. This is exactly what we will discover as we attempt to navigate its history.

The famous French publisher, scholar, and anthologist JEAN-JEAN PAUVER invites us to wander through the gardens of erotic literature from its beginnings in the texts of Mesopotamia and Egypt to ancient Greek and Roman love, throughout late antiquity and the Middle Ages, in China, Japan, India, and Arab countries, to the eroticism of the era during the development of printing, in the 18th century and the particularity of French libertinism, in the case of Sade, to the eroticism of the 19th and 20th centuries, the sexual revolution, but also the evolution of censorship throughout the ages, reaching up to the erotic literature of our days.

A brief journey from the publisher who first officially published the works of the Marquis de Sade in France in 1947, which had been banned for 150 years and circulated illegally. Pauver is an emblematic figure of the publishing of erotic texts for over half a century.