Book covers go X-rated

It is a truth universally acknowledged that authors in need of perking up their plots turn to matters carnal because sex sells.

Everybody, however renowned in the literary canon, has been at it - spicing up their prose by removing characters' clothes.

Chaucer's illicit lovers in The Merchant's Tale enjoyed their union up a tree, DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley got down and dirty with the gamekeeper and Byron's Don Juan memorably bedded his nanny.

Now a new edition of literary classics is set to test the erotic appetites of readers by lifting steamy scenes from the pages and emblazoning them on the cover.

Publisher Vintage calls its new Blue edition of 12 modern titillating novels "sexed-up classics" - they are effectively using sexual content to sell literature. Vintage says each book offers insights into a different kind of thrill: "Sex with the older woman, sex with the older man, fantasy sex, forbidden sex, dangerous sex, liberated sex, wet sex, dirty sex, raw sex, sex and shopping," and finally "sex with toys".

Judging a book by its cover may be frowned upon but - judging by these covers - the stories are very saucy indeed. They could even attract a few puritanical frowns on the Tube.

The front of Linda Jaivin's novel Eat Me is relatively restrained, featuring two ripe figs, one suggestively split.

By contrast Alina Reyes's The Butcher, described by the Standard as "fleshy, beautiful and obscene", has a photograph of a woman with her head thrown back, lost in the throes of ecstasy. Jeanette Winterson's The Passion shows two women in a sensual embrace, and Philip Roth's hilarious Portnoy's Complaint has an illustration of a blonde, wearing only a bra and leering at the reader.

The cover of Kingsley Amis's Jake's Thing shows the open fly of a pair of pinstripe trousers.

Vintage plans to splash its covers across newspapers in a publicity campaign for the Blue editions' launch in August.

There is no doubt paperbacks sell well if readers suspect they contain a touch of spice. The Sexual Life Of Catherine M has been a surprise hit, while Atomised, also from Vintage, was helped by its cover of a woman dressed in only her knickers.