Beschreibung:

BOYER d'ARGENS, Jean-Baptiste (1703-1771), attributed to.] Thérèse philosophe, ou Mémoires Pour servir à l’Histoire de D. Dirrag, & de Mademoiselle Éradice . The Hague [Liege:] [Montigny, 1748].
BOYER d'ARGENS, Jean-Baptiste (1703-1771), attributed to.] Thérèse philosophe, ou Mémoires Pour servir à l’Histoire de D. Dirrag, & de Mademoiselle Éradice . The Hague [Liege:] [Montigny, 1748]. Two volumes in one, octavo (186 x 123 mm). 17 engraved plates, including the frontispiece, 9 of these folding. (Folding plates with some creasing and some tears at the folds, some of these repaired, plate 9 trimmed in the bottom margin, occasional light soiling and light spotting.) Contemporary mottled calf, flat spine gilt in compartments, red morocco label gilt, edges red, marbled endpapers (extremities rubbed, spine scuffed). VERY RARE FIRST EDITION OF THIS ICON OF LIBERTINISM. AE and ABPC record no copy of this edition at auction. Thérèse Philosophe is, with Le Portier de Chartreux , one of the earliest pornographic novels in any European language, and a work of enduring relevance: the text is inspired by the notorious Girard-Cadière scandal, a subject reprised by Huxley in his The Devils of Loudun , and the inspiration for Ken Russell’s The Devils . In the notes for his unfinished last novel, The Story of a Great Sinner , Dostoevsky writes that Thérèse is the book which caused his hero to go astray. The printing history of the early editions of Thérèse is notoriously tangled: in order to baffle censors all early editions bear an undated The Hague imprint. The present copy conforms to Dutel’s description of the true first edition, most of which was quickly seized and destroyed, copperplates included, by the authorities. According to Apollinaire, the copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France lacks all the plates. This copy bound with an ‘explication des seize estampes’ between pages 140 and 141 not noted by Dutel. Apollinaire Enfer , 403; Dutel A-1071; cf. Eros invaincu 27.