Arlington House 1980's Erotic Photo Books Front Covers

[glovesfan]

I'm not absolutely sure - some of the pics are a bit blurry, I assume you took them with your digital camera? - but it's possible they're the same woman. As I noted earlier, several models appear in multiple titles in the series. Techniques of Making Love was probably photographed by Pierre Cuisinier, who also lensed Women Loving Women and Orgy: An Erotic Experience. Also, I think the blonde who appears in the early-90's book Fanny Hill is the same blonde who appears in Confessions of a French Maid. I'll try to get some comparison scans soon.

By the way, I believe Arlington House, Crescent, Loveline and Colour Library Books are all imprints of the same publishing house, Crown Publishers, a division of Random House. The very first book in the series that I ever bought, Peter Barry's Touch of Lace, was a Crescent title. In the '80's and early '90's a lot of the Arlington House/Loveline series were distributed through Outlet Book Company, which was connected with Random House Value Publishing (in fact, Amazon searches for several of these books report their publisher as being Random House Value Publishing - which is part of the parent company of Crown Publishing/Arlington House - so keep that in mind). One point of potential confusion is that there seem to actually be two book imprints/publishers called Arlington House. The one we're concerned with is/was a division of Crown Publishers, Inc., and had its offices at 225 Park Avenue South, New York, NY, 10003, until the early 1990's (Crown Publishers still appears to be located there). The other Arlington House, by the way, is a publisher in New Rochelle, New York, which mainly specializes in books aimed at political conservatives, so it'd be a VERY odd place for this series to be published! (However, the well-known movie writer James Robert Parish published many of his books - a number of which I have - through this Arlington House.)

Crown Publishing is still in business today, with the website http://crownpublishing.com/imprint/crown-publishers/ . It might be worthwhile to contact them to find out if they can provide any information about this series. In fact, if they have online contact facilities, I think I'll do that today.

P.S. Colour Library Books is connected with Arlington House/Crown Publishers. It was the original publisher in England of Techniques of Making Love, for example. However, after about 1986, the original British publisher of these books was Loveline Publishing, Ltd. of London. I'm going to google a bit and see if I can turn up anything on Loveline. I've just written Crown Publishing and asked them if they can provide any information about this book series.

P.P.S.: Loveline Publishing, Ltd., was based in Godalming, Surrey, and was apparently incorporated in November of 1985. However, it's long since closed down; the last titles I know of under this imprint appeared in 1993/1994.

[Bosie]

Thanks for the information Glovesfan and sorry about the quality of the photographs, I dont have a scanner so they were taken with a digital camera. It's very interesting how several companies, publishers, etc are linked together. I would love to know the model's name from The Perfumed Garden and The Complete Beauty Book but they weren't credited. I'm sure they've done much more work than that listed above.

[Immy]

Excellent stuff! Doesn't matter how obscure the erotica topic, there are VEF guys with info. I'll contribute a model's name if I recognize one (women too! ) but so far I'm drawing a blank.

One question: Many of these ads touted "explicit" photography. Did some go as far as visible penetration in any form?

[glovesfan]

Originally Posted by Immy

Excellent stuff! Doesn't matter how obscure the erotica topic, there are VEF guys with info. I'll contribute a model's name if I recognize one (women too! ) but so far I'm drawing a blank.

One question: Many of these ads touted "explicit" photography. Did some go as far as visible penetration in any form?

Only a few titles, but yes, several of the books go into "hardcore" territory. As far as M/F, Lovers Behind Closed Doors, Private Parts, Confessions of a French Maid, All Through The Night, Group Sex (no explicit penetration, but a couple of explicit oral sex views), and possibly Orgy: An Erotic Experience (there are a couple of photos strongly implying that actual penetration is taking place).

[spaceman69]

Based on this 'new treasure' thread I've managed to source a copy of 'private parts' on the belief I recognised the model on the front cover (instincts proven wrong regrettably).
However surprised to find Marie Harper within in h/c action along with Jo Philips and Karen Thornton in pics. Will scan a few sample pages and add to the thread.
Cheers
Spaceman

[spaceman69]

Here's some samples from Private Parts (apols, got a new scanner and it's a pain in the backside for settings).
Large pic is Marie Harper, selected small pics (scanner chopped up one page - the ar5e!) features MH, Linzi Drew, Jo Philips and a couple of others whose names I cannot recall.
Will suss scanner and crack on with other pages.
Cheers
Spaceman

[glovesfan]

Many thanks for the ID's! However, can I ask a favor? I'm not quite as familiar with some of these models as you are, so can you provide an index for the pictures you posted to show who's who, or else rename the pictures to indicate who the (identified) models are in the pics? It would be a HUGE help, on top of the big contribution you've already made. (I have Private Parts too, by the way. The M/F and F/F action shown in the excerpted photos can be found in its full sets in the volumes Lovers Behind Closed Doors, Women Behind Closed Doors and Woman to Woman.)

EDIT: I'm going to go ahead and list Marie Harper as the female model in Lovers Behind Closed Doors on the first-page index.

[spaceman69]

thanks Glovesfan - ID wise (l to r)...bath girls are linzi drew and marie harper, think it is nikki downey (blonde) in pics 1 and 5, marie harper is in pics 2, 6 and 7, jo philips is in pic 1(?) and 4.
A short haired Karen Thornton appears in PP, will scan a page or two later this week.
Very interesting collection of material within these publications, some covers suggest Marie Harper was a regular!
cheers
spaceman

[glovesfan]

Originally Posted by spaceman69

thanks Glovesfan - ID wise (l to r)...bath girls are linzi drew and marie harper, think it is nikki downey (blonde) in pics 1 and 5, marie harper is in pics 2, 6 and 7, jo philips is in pic 1(?) and 4.
A short haired Karen Thornton appears in PP, will scan a page or two later this week.
Very interesting collection of material within these publications, some covers suggest Marie Harper was a regular!
cheers
spaceman

I'll update the appropriate entries. Looks like Linzi Drew would be in Women Behind Closed Doors, Jo Philips in Woman to Woman and Nikki Downey (maybe) also in Woman to Woman. Marie Harper is a lock as the model in Lovers/Women Behind Closed Doors: see this picture from the MH thread; http://img220.imagevenue.com/img.php..._123_124lo.jpg .

[glovesfan]

Models identified so far, positively or tentatively, who appear in this series:

Linzi Drew (Women Behind Closed Doors): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t7580-linzi-drew.html
Marie Harper (Lovers Behind Closed Doors, Women Behind Closed Doors, Private Parts, All Through The Night): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t45...ie-harper.html
Jo Phillips (Woman To Woman, Solo Flights, Private Parts): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t4533-jo-phillips.html
Felicity Stewart a/k/a Nikki Downey (Woman To Woman): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t74...nga-olsen.html
Heather Mills (formerly Heather Mills McCartney) (Sex Games, Sexual Secrets): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t90...mccartney.html
Samantha Fox (UK) (probably the biggest name to participate in this series) (The Lingerie Book, Sensual Lingerie, Almost Naked: The Allure of Lingerie): http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/t82...ha-fox-uk.html

I'll update this page as more ID's come in. With several prominent '80's British hardcore/softcore models lending their talents to this series (and I think we're only scraping the tip of the iceberg here), it's a mystery why nobody has thought to pull all this data together in one place before...in particular, I'm really rather astonished that nobody before now seems to have twigged to the Linzi Drew/Marie Harper pairing in Women Behind Closed Doors, which took up the entire book!!