SINISTRARI, Ludovico Maria. ~ Peccatum mutum (the mute Sin, alias Sodomy) a theological Treatise. For the first Time translated from the Latin of Father Sinistrari. Paris: Isidore Liseux, 1893.
12mo (158 × 100 mm), pp. ix, [3], 76, original printed blue wrappers, preserved in early twentieth-century green half morocco. Upper joint repaired, an excellent copy.
First edition in English, very scarce, a portion of Sinistrari’s De Delictis et Poenis Tractatus Absolutissimus (1700). The English title here finds an echo the following year with ’The love that dare not speak its name’ in Lord Alfred Douglas’s poem ‘Two Loves’ (1894), later discussed at length in the Wilde trial. Liseux was a pioneering figure in the publication of clandestine literature in English, working from Paris, but evidently supplying an English market. His publications were frequently scholarly texts in the history of sexuality and found their way onto the shelves of bibliophiles and collectors of erotica.
Ludovico Maria Sinistrari (26 February 1622 – 1701) was an Italian Franciscan priest, author, and member of the Inquisition tasked with the investigation of sexuality. Worldcat: Cornell, NYPL, UC Davis, Trinity College Oxford, Bibliothèque nationale.