Venus in Furs

First published in German in 1870 as Venus im Pelz, Venus in Furs gained for its author both notoriety and a degree of immortality when the word "masochism"--derived from his name--entered the psychiatric lexicon. The first illustrated edition was published in Leipzig: Georg H. Wigand, 1921 with line drawings by Fritz Bucholz.

The novel describes the sexual obsessions of Severin von Kusiemski, a European nobleman with the desire "to be the slave of a woman." Severin finds his ideal of voluptuous cruelty in the merciless Wanda von Dunajew