Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess , is a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 erotic novel first published in 1833. Its authorship is anonymous, but it is believed to have been written by Alfred de Musset

Alfred de Musset

Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist.Along with his poetry, he is known for writing La Confession d'un enfant du siècle from 1836.-Biography:Musset was born on 11 December 1810 in Paris...

 and the lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 eponymous heroine a portrait of his lover, George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

. It became a bestseller

Bestseller

A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...

 among nineteenth century erotic literature.

The novel was illustrated with unsigned lithographs whose authorship remains unknown. They have been attributed to Achille Devéria

Achille Devéria

Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria was a French painter and lithographer. His father was a civil employee of the navy and student of Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson and Louis Lafitte ....

 and Octave Tassaert

Octave Tassaert

Octave Tassaert was a French painter of portraits and genre, religious, historical and allegorical paintings, as well as a lithographer and engraver, though this family was of Flemish origin. He was the grandson of the sculptor Jean-Pierre-Antoine Tassaert.- Life :Octave's first artistic training...

, among others.

Outline

Modeled after George Sand, this work gives us a young man observing the Countess Gamiani and a young girl named Fanny, engaged in their lesbian bed. Having watched them and provoked by their abandonment, he reveals himself, joins them, and they spend the night alternately sharing their intimate histories and their bodies. The stories they tell include the rape of one in a monastery and the nearly fatal debauchment of another in a convent, as well as encounters with a number of animals, including an ape and a donkey.

Author Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...

had an unpublished work based on this text.