The book our mothers & grandmothers
swooned over. Also immortalized by Rudolf Valentino.

Yes, we're going back to ye olde school of bodice rippers for this one.

DID it stand the test of time and compare to its bodice-ripping descendants?

Ah yes, the book that launched a million Harlequins. Imagine, there'd have been no The Playboy Sheikh's Virgin Stable-Girl if not for Edith Maude Hull's 1918 bodice ripper, which turned sheiks into literary catnip forever, for all time.

This is the original "virgin ravished by sheik" romance, with all the required alpha male swagger and conceit, as well as the shamed heroine's vows of eternal hatred eventually blossoming into consuming love.

The only thing it's missing is more explicit descriptions of sex, although Hull leaves no doubt just what Diana Mayo has endured night after night at Ahmed Ben Hassan's brutally sensual hands:
"Her pride was dying hard. Her mind travelled back slowly over the days and nights of anguished revolt, the perpetual clash of will against will, the enforced obedience that had made up this month of horror. A month of experience of such bitterness that she wondered dully how she still had the courage to rebel. For the first time in her life she had had to obey. For the first time in her life she was of no account. For the first time she had been made conscious of the inferiority of her sex."
She appreciates beauty in songs and a desert sunset, but she honestly doesn't understand romantic notions or emotions. That's why when Ahmed rapes her, she feels totally and utterly crushed, because her beliefs didn't see her through that awful AWFUL night! And since it is her first experience with sexuality, it's all she has to work from.

It was awesome to read a novel where the author was unable to come right out and say it, so she had to be more circumspect with just a hint of salacious description (and the book still got banned). It takes skill, and Hull succeeded superbly.

2 Used paperbacks... 'The Sheik' more used than the sequel.