On the other hand, many of the submissions were love stories, which focused on romance rather than sexuality. Does the notion of love then form part of women’s erotica? (sic!) Can we in fact delineate between romanticism, eroticism, and pornography?

Subsequent paragraphs suggest that the editor does indeed subscribe to such simplistic linear schemata. On this grid system, writing which speaks of desire while scrupulously avoiding precise anatomical reference is ‘romantic’, while a verbal peppering of cocks and cunts is ‘erotic’ – unless the mix becomes too hot and tasteless, in which case it comes (so to speak) into the range of the pornographic.

Of course, this is nonsense. One has only to recall what must surely rank as one of the steamiest and most memorably erotic scenes on celluloid: that moment in the film version of D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love, at Hermione’s al fresco luncheon, when Gerald (Alan Bates) slowly peels a fig while making arch conversation with Gudrun (Glenda Jackson). The air is thick with sexual innuendo, but there is not a single direct reference to, and not so much as a glimpse of, a sexual organ (though, very likely, hundreds of fig fetishes can be traced back to that scene).

Clearly, the verbal or visual presence or absence of the genitals has little to do with what makes for the erotic in art, and the reader of the book’s introduction will wince at certain supremely silly observations; e.g.: (two of the stories) ‘are clearly erotic in their overt descriptions of lovemaking.’ In fact, one of those overt descriptions is a contender for the book’s least erotic piece, veering perilously close to Mills & Boon in tone.

Romance writing is lightweight, not because it avoids descriptions of fucking, but because it is formulaic and slack and sentimental – as are too many of the pieces in this collection. The failure to understand this leads the editor to make such intellectually embarrassing statements as the following:

Our search for early examples of erotic fiction by Australian women writers turned up material in which love and romance dominated. Any sense of eroticism was greatly understated if mentioned at all.

‘Erotic writing’ has here become synonymous with reference to genital activity. Such a thesis, like a nervous penis, will not stand up to close examination.

A further contention of both the book’s title and its introduction is that women’s erotica is essentially different from that of men. This is certainly a legitimate and provocative and potentially illuminating domain for literary inquiry. Unfortunately, once again, the editorial comments evince insufficient thought.

Is the very nature of female sexuality, in life and literature, wider and more diffuse than simple genital arousal, the editor asks (though not in so few words.)

Of course it is. But so is the nature of male sexuality in both life and literature. Consider Samuel Pepys, in his diary, reaching for a metaphor that will do justice to the ecstasy he felt on listening to the King’s musicians. It was, he said, like the climactic moment of his wife’s embrace in bed. For Pepys, the music itself was sexually arousing; the music led him to think of bedding his wife. To move to the visual: consider Eric Rohmer, French filmmaker, expatiating at erotic length on Clare’s knee in the film of that name, wherein is shown that knees are at least as sexually provocative as figs. Or consider D.H. Lawrence, in The Rainbow, writing of Will’s response to Lincoln Cathedral; here the architecture, the building itself, is charged with an erotic force which spills into a sexual reverie of Anna, though the anatomical focus of Will’s desire is Anna’s ankle.

Fortunately, Lyn Giles’s instincts as an editor are considerably more acute than her theories. Although she has given us a rather heavy sludge of lacklustre inclusions, there are also exhilarating finds. Chief of these is Susan Johnson’s ‘Seeing’ a very nearly perfect piece of writing, which all on its own would justify the purchase of the book. Like Hopkins, the most erotic of religious poets, Johnson understands that the whole world (especially when it is at the beach) is charged with the erections and secretions of God and that She is sexually present in food, in children, in fat old men, in warm sand, in the air we breathe.

Close on Johnson’s sensuous heels is Kate Grenville’s prose apologia, which precedes her set piece. While the latter is a surgically fine analysis of sexual power politics, I find her apologia more seductive. It is intelligent, witty, sinewy writing, and voices the credo that Johnson’s story embodies: ‘I find life erotic, of course, but the nearest I come with literature is to find it profoundly sensual, but not in a specifically sexual way.’ I would only reiterate that the profoundly sensual is sexual, and that the more accurate word to use in this context would be ‘... in a specifically genital way.’ There are fine inclusions from Gamer, Jolley, Masters, and others which evoke small worlds suffused with the aura of sexuality.

Several stories explore bittersweet territory – the sometimes comic but often poignantly out-of­sync responses of men and women to sexual arousal. In fact, this is the anthology’s most valuable cumulative effect. By the final story, the reader is in possession of a string of epiphanies, little illuminations of sexual/emotional pain. Again, Susan Johnson does this best; several others do it very well indeed; and, in spite of mawkish tendencies, Patricia Gaut’s story ‘The Cashews’ has a knockout impact.

I am puzzled by the heavy heterosexual bias. Surely a collection such as this should include more lesbian erotica, but Giles has given us only an extract from Miss Peabody’s Inheritance, and the marvellously ‘polymorphous perverse’ stories by Shelley Kay. Though I have read, recently, much writing that is essentially Mills & Boon for lesbians, I also think that some of the most interesting experimental erotic writing being done at present is lesbian erotica. I find it hard to believe that the editor could not have found some Australian examples.

Nevertheless, Lyn Giles has taken on a valiant enterprise and her book is a valuable starting point. There will undoubtedly be better collections of erotica by Australian women – as long as future editors keep in mind that bad writing is not erotic, no matter how many tumescent or lubricated words it brandishes. Conversely, I would maintain that very good writing (like Lincoln Cathedral; like Pepys’s royal musicians; like a very good fuck) turns us on, and hence (to revert to the Macquarie’s second definition) I would contend that really good writing is erotic no matter what it is about.