Fragoletta, Naples et Paris en 1799. by [LATOUCHE, Henri de].

2 vols, 8vo (200 × 120 mm), pp. vii, [1], 343, [1]; [iv], 341, [3], with half-titles and 1 p. adverts at end of vol. 2. Occasional pale spotting, mainly marginal. Contemporary sprinkled quarter sheep, spines with orange and black labels, yellow edges. Very minor rubbing. An excellent copy.

First edition. Fragoletta, in which a woman (albeit expressed as neither fully female or male) disguises herself as a man and seduces another woman, was a major point of reference for early nineteenth-century literature, notably inspiring Balzac’s Séraphîta and Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin with its fascination with the androgynous or doubly-sexed body. It clearly took inspiration from Bernini’s statue of the sleeping hermaphrodite and is one of the first nineteenth century novels to feature a hermaphrodite protagonist. It’s most obvious echo in English literature is in Swinburne, whose 1866 Poems and Ballads contained the poem ‘Fragoletta’ — an ode to androgyny in which the boy/girl (’a double-rose’) is rendered more desirable by their double sexuality.