Novelizations of Femina Ridens, The Libertine & Defiance

These next two are interrelated. Unlike Defiance, which was an American production, Femina Ridens (1969 aka "The Laughing Woman") and La Matriarca (1968 aka "The Libertine") started as Italian erotic films. They were then ported to the US and dubbed in English by director/producer Radley Metzger, who pulled out all the stops and commissioned novelizations as a tie in. (With Jacapo Massimo writing Libertine and Hadrian Keene writing Femina.) His production/distribution company, Audubon Films, has since gone out of business, leaving these books in a precarious state where they seem destined to fall into obscurity without grassroots preservation. Who knows if there even exists a master copy of the texts in a vault somewhere and the original authors are dead--the few scattered copies in existence may be our only chance to ever access these stories again. 

There are 9 additional novelizations of Audubon's erotic films. I have not attempted to recover any of the others yet, because I only have a personal connection to Femina and Libertine, and they cost me ~$30 each. I just haven't the means right now to hunt for 9 more of these...but I hope someone else will, or someone who already has them will preserve the text online. (If anyone should take up the mantle of this search, the lowest priority should be given to Therese and Isabelle. That's because the book, while rereleased in America as a marketing tie-in for the film, originated as a French novella that's wildly available outside the Audubon pressing.)

When I was searching for personal copies of Femina and Libertine, I could only find one of each--the last available on the whole internet. (I've since seen a single additional posting for The Libertine--at $100!) The Libertine was especially exciting to hunt down, because the first copy I tried to buy actually got lost in the mail and for awhile I thought I'd botched my only chance to ever read it, until two new postings cropped up overnight like magic. Adding further mystique is that the author, "Jacapo Massimo," (whose name is comprised of two Italian first names, the former misspelled with an "a") is a complete and total ghost online. It's probably the pseudonym of a long-dead writer who may or may not have ever published anything else. I find this rabbit hole fascinating, but for better or worse we'll probably never get an answer.

The Libertine is about a young widow named Mimi who discovers upon his death that her husband was a sex maniac with a secret apartment to host his affairs. She then sets out to prove herself to him in absentia by exploring her own sexuality.

Internet Archive link.

Drive link. 

Dropbox link.

^If there's any problems with the links, let me know.


The Laughing Woman is about a raging misogynist named Dr. Sayer who fantasizes about abducting and killing a woman for his sexual pleasure. One of his employees, a young woman named Maria, has to stop at his house to gather materials for an assignment, giving him the perfect opportunity to do so.

Internet Archive link.

Drive link.

Dropbox link.

^If any of these don't work, let me know.