Priapeia or the Sportive Epigrams of Divers Poets on Priapus Now First Completely Done into English Prose from the Original Latin with Introduction Notes Explanatory and Illustrative and Excursus: to which is appended the Latin text
Athens: Erotika Biblion Society, 1888 [actually 1889]. Hardcover. xxxiv, [2], 238 pages. Hardcover, in very good condition. Bound in green 3/4 leather with green and blue marbled boards and endpapers. Spine has five raised bands and gilt lettering and decorations. Mild wear at tips and spine ends, and slight chipping to the top and bottom board edges, but generally bright and sound. One of 250 copies printed for private distribution, though this copy is numbered 250 with an additional mark that suggests other copies may have been produced. Item #898
Along with Harry Sidney Nelson, Leonard C. Smithers, the influential London "publisher to the Decadents" including Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Arthur Symons and the Savoy magazine, established the Erotika Biblion Society to publish illicit materials. This title is listed on a preliminary page as the Society's first publication, but the introduction states that circumstances delayed its production until 1889, and that the publishers decided to use the existing volume numbering and title page, which gives 1888 as the publication date. The Latin translation, by Sir Richard Burton, is one of his last works; the introduction and notes are by Smithers. An attractive copy of a major work of late Victorian erotica.
Price: $1,200.00