Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Crossover Cover: A Pretty Mouth

This collection features several generations of the Calipash family, who are noble in social status if not in nature. The stories are in reverse chronological order. The first story in the book features Jeeves and Bertie Wooster. Also, the present Lord Calipash refers to his American cousins, the Mortlows. The Mortlow family is from Alan M. Clark's novel A Parliament of Crows, which like A Pretty Mouth was published by Lazy Fascist Press. A reference to "Rafael Sabatini's recently-published Scaramouche" places this story in 1921. Another story, "The Hour of the Tortoise," is set in 1887. Chelone Burchell, an illegitimate offspring of the Calipash family, writes a pornographic story that mentions Miss Coote’s Academy for Young Women of Breeding and Promise. The family’s Private Library included a copy of a book entitled Nameless Cults. Chelone once had sex with Lord Crim-Con. Miss Coote is a reference to Rosa Coote, a character who appeared in the Victorian pornographic magazine The Pearl. Rosa was confirmed to exist in the CU in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which depicted her as having taken over the Correctional Academy for Wayward Gentlewomen she attended in the original stories. Chelone must have known the real Rosa Coote, and incorporated her into her story. Lord Crim-Con is from another serial in The Pearl, “Lady Pokingham, or They All Do It”; Lady Pokingham was mentioned in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as visiting the Academy. Friedrich von Juntz’s book Nameless Cults (or Unaussprechlichen Kulten) appears in Cthulhu Mythos stories by Robert E. Howard.

3 comments:

  1. Just what the CU needs: More links to Victorian Porn!

    I take it from the cover this is a horror collection?

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  2. Considering that Farmer wrote A Feast Unknown, Image of the Beast, and Blown for a pornographic publisher, I honestly don't have a problem with including such works in the CU (or the WNU, for that matter) if they have an actual story in addition to all the sex.

    There are definitely horror elements to some of the stories, yes.

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  3. I don't really have a problem with it's inclusion. I just wanted to use the phrase Victorian Porn.

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