Geoff Lister/The Ubyssey

“Here’s a cute little story,” said Ralph Stanton.

The head of UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections department gestured to a series of books in the Love! in the Library? exhibition, which is running for Valentine’s Day.

The exhibition—which includes limited reprintings of Shakespeare, compilations of love letters, linoleum printing plates and a series of covers from a Montréal fetish magazine—tries to analyze how people have used books to talk about love and sex.

“We’ve often thought about bringing out [these] seldom-seen things in the library,” Stanton said. “I think these things are common throughout human existence and I think they’re just expressed in different ways.”

The collection includes about ten issues of Bizarre, a bondage and fetish magazine authored and illustrated by John Coutts between 1946 and 1959.

“A second lieutenant in the British Army, [Coutts] married what’s described as a ‘showgirl,’” Stanton said. “You had to ask your commanding officer if you could marry at the time…[so] he got turfed out of the army, came to Montréal and started this periodical, which is pretty amazing.”

The books are themed around leather fetishism, but Stanton said there is an undercurrent of social commentary. “Women have had all these jobs during the Second World War,” he said.

“Suddenly all these very competent women and the guys who have been fighting are kind of at sea.”

Not all of the books depict smooth sailing.

Several pieces, including a Leonard Cohen poem, reference the Song of Solomon from the Bible. “The Song of Solomon is described as an erotic poem, but the subtext is a criticism of King Solomon and the fact that he had so many wives,” Stanton said.

“His wives turned away his heart. They were not happy with him.”

One book includes love letters from BC landscape painter Toni Onley. “We have these beautiful erotic drawings by Toni with a very elegant, beautiful love letter to her,” Stanton said, pointing to a poem written over a watercolour of a nude woman. Next to it is a more formal letter with custom letterhead.

“Then the relationship starts to come apart through these letters, and then we end up with a letter called ‘Dispatches from an Emotional Swamp.’”

Ultimately, the exhibition is meant to be a break from the collection’s educational focus.

“It’s a bit of fun, so I’m hoping they’ll enjoy it,” he said. “I hope couples come to see this because it’s kind of enjoyable and it talks about personal things in an interesting way.”

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