Lost Girls was published by Top Shelf Productions in 2006 as a three-volume slipcased hardcover set. Written by Moore and drawn by his partner Melinda Gebbie over sixteen years of work, it is a deliberately pornographic graphic novel featuring adult versions of three fictional women: Alice (from Lewis Carroll), Dorothy (from L. Frank Baum), and Wendy (from J.M. Barrie).
The three women meet at a hotel in Austria in 1913, on the eve of World War I. They are in their sixties, thirties, and twenties respectively. Over the course of their stay, they share their sexual histories — each revealed to be the “true” story behind their fictional adventures. Alice’s Wonderland was a series of sexual encounters with older men; Dorothy’s Oz was a sexual awakening on a Kansas farm; Wendy’s Neverland was a confused adolescent encounter with a young vagrant. The hotel itself is a site of polymorphous sexual activity, presided over by a proprietor named Monsieur Rougeur who provides a library of elaborate pornographic books.
Moore’s argument — stated explicitly in interviews and implicitly in the text — is that pornography is a legitimate form of art, that the sexual imagination has the same right to freedom as any other imagination, and that the shame surrounding explicit depiction is a form of cultural damage. The book is beautiful, explicit, and deliberately transgressive. It was delayed for years by concerns about the use of characters from children’s literature.
Collecting Lost Girls
First edition (Top Shelf Productions, 2006): Three-volume slipcased hardcover set.
Market values:
- First edition slipcased set, fine: $100–$300
- Individual volumes: rare outside the set
- Signed copies: $200–$500