The Way of a Man with a Maid - 4 volumes

The Way of a Man with a Maid is an anonymous, sadomasochistic, erotic novel, probably first published in 1908. The story is told in the first person by a gentleman called "Jack", who lures women he knows into a kind of erotic torture chamber, called "The Snuggery", in his house, and takes considerable pride in meticulously planned rapes which he describes in minute detail.

Most of the story takes place in a room in a house called 'The Snuggery', which the narrator, "Jack", converts into an erotic torture chamber equipped with beds to which women can be strapped and held helpless. The room is soundproofed to ensure their screams go unheard. Other equipment includes cords and pulleys, flagellation implements, and a mechanical "Chair of Treachery" to which helpless females are lured to be restrained in.

The first of many victims lured into 'The Snuggery' is a girl called Alice, a member of Jack's social set who had earlier jilted him and on whom he takes revenge by subjecting her to a series of sexual acts without her consent. The description of Alice's rape, with the narrator repeatedly expressing great satisfaction at her fear and humiliation, takes the whole of the first part, called "The Tragedy". At its end, Alice has completely submitted and become Jack's willing sexual partner.

In the second part, called "The Comedy", Alice locates further victims for Jack, helps lure them to be raped in turn, and actively helps in making them sexually available to Jack. The rape scenes of Alice's servant girl, Fanny, and Alice's friend, Connie, follow the same pattern, with the new victims vainly protesting and resisting Jack, and then converted (as Jack puts it) into an eager sexual partner and an active accomplice in the rape of the next victim.

By the final episode, when the wealthy Lady Betty and her daughter Molly have been lured into the rape room, his earlier victims-turned-accomplices undress and restrain the women. Thereupon, mother and daughter are not only subjected to repeated rape, but also forced into a long series of incestuous acts with each other, carried out to inflict maximum humiliation and degradation upon them, and accompanied by endless gloating and taunting from Jack and his three female accomplices.