VENUS Imprint Edition Titles

Roy Kuhlman designed both the subtle, elegant, monochromatic, early template for the Venus Library titles and the later (post V1020) photo-themed title-templates and several of the covers to the titles listed here below. I have included much later titles as well.  Here is a taste of an excellent essay entitled, "One Touch of Venus (Library) Odyssey of an Imprint" click HERE for the full article.  I have come across an excellent collection of these titles by Mr. Stuart Fanning (Front Covers of Titles 1969 -1973). Click HERE for his page



"​The original idea was to reprint vintage clandestine American erotica of the 1920s and 1930s in well-designed and printed paper editions. The imprint's original wrapper design was clean and simple: well-wrought, distinctive lettering of the title, subtitle and author against a plain, single color background with thin white margins, at the head Venus' elegant signature vignette - a highly stylized, abstracted Venus figure in black, a stemmed round form over an inverted heart sitting atop a goblet, whose shape clearly suggests head and neck above full breasts atop full hips. The paper used was high quality and acid-free, the typography excellent; no cheesy offset photo-reprinting of the original source edition. Grove Press' name appeared along the spine below the Venus logo and as copyright holder. The overall look was of reserved class (...) Gone was the understated elegance of the original wrapper design; now, though still very nicely designed the covers were photo-illustrated to grab the fickle porn-public's attention."