Search

Criteria:
  • Keywords = gay
  • Monsieur Vénus. Roman matérialiste. by RACHILDE [and] ‘Francis TALMAN’. RACHILDE [and] ‘Francis TALMAN’. ~ Monsieur Vénus. Roman matérialiste. Brussels: Auguste Brancart, 1884.
    First edition, first issue, complete with all subsequently censored text, including the final scene in which the heroine makes love to a partially animated transgender… (more)

    First edition, first issue, complete with all subsequently censored text, including the final scene in which the heroine makes love to a partially animated transgender mannequin. Rachilde, who was to style herself as a ‘man of letters’ on her calling cards was just 24 when Monsieur Vénus, her second novel was published in Brussels. The book caused an immediate scandal and was vigorously suppressed by the Belgian and French authorities. Subsequent editions were shorn of the novel’s more shocking passages, which were conveniently attributed to Rachilde’s (probably-fictitiou)s co-author ‘Francis Talman’, whose name appeared on the title page. Some critics refused to believe that a work which frankly recounted the pursuit of sexual pleasure by a noblewoman, Raoule de Vénérande, could possibly be the work of a young woman. It remains an unsettling work, describing Raoule’s treatment of her young male lover, Silvert, who she persistently feminizes and humiliates. Silvert ultimately dies at the hands of one of Raoule’s suitor’s in a duel, and is replaced by her with a mannequin (with real hair, teeth and fingernails) who can be alternately dressed in male and female clothes.

    The Belgian authorities sought to destroy as many copies of the first edition as possible, and it is accordingly a noted rarity. We can locate the following copies: BnF, Bibliothèque Jaques Doucet, Institut de France in France and Library of Congress, University of Houston, Vanderbilt University in North America, British Library and Cambridge in the UK and Kb in the Netherlands.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £950.00
  • After Reading [After Berneval]. Letters to Robert Ross. by WILDE, Oscar. WILDE, Oscar. ~ After Reading [After Berneval]. Letters to Robert Ross. [London:] Beaumont Press, 1921-2.
    First editions, limited issues, numbers 127 and 231 of 200 and 400 copies respectively (a further 75 copies of each edition were issued on Japanese… (more)

    First editions, limited issues, numbers 127 and 231 of 200 and 400 copies respectively (a further 75 copies of each edition were issued on Japanese vellum and signed by publisher and artists). Separately issued companion volumes, collecting Wilde’s letters to Ross, his sometime-lover, constant companion and literary executor, written from France in the aftermath of his release from Reading Gaol. Ross faithfully guarded Wilde’s personal and literary legacy after his death, pursuing pirated editions and preserving his literary rights for Wilde’s sons. It was he who commissioned Epstein’s sculpture for the tomb at Père Lachaise and his will stipulated that his own ashes should be placed there with Oscar’s.

    Ross had prepared a volume of Wilde’s post-prison letters to him before the first war and had drafted an introduction shortly before his own sudden death in 1918. These two small volumes are selections, but represent the earliest attempt at a collection of Wilde letters. They are expurgated by removing the names of Lord Alfred Douglas, Constance Wilde and a few others, but the meanings are always obvious.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £500.00
  • Apologia pro Oscar Wilde. by (WILDE). YOUNG, Dalhousie. (WILDE). YOUNG, Dalhousie. ~ Apologia pro Oscar Wilde. London: William Reeves, [ 1895].
    First edition of this defence of Wilde by his loyal friend, composer and pianist, Dalhousie Young. ‘Published after Oscar Wilde's trial, during which Wilde's works… (more)

    First edition of this defence of Wilde by his loyal friend, composer and pianist, Dalhousie Young. ‘Published after Oscar Wilde's trial, during which Wilde's works were used as evidence of his ‘immorality'’ Apologia pro Oscar Wilde sets out to defend Wilde and his writing. Dalhousie Young argues that a work of fiction is not automatically a work of autobiography; fiction does reveal an author's inner secrets or true character. Powerfully, Young furthermore publicly questions whether it is right that sexual acts between two consenting adults of the same sex should be outlawed (see p. 38), or looked upon as a ‘sin’’ (British Library).

    This is the second of two issues of the first edition, distinguished by its darker wrapper. Millard, Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, p. 574, no. 679.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £200.00
  • Peccatum mutum (the mute Sin, alias Sodomy) a theological Treatise. For the first Time translated from the Latin of Father Sinistrari. by SINISTRARI, Ludovico Maria. 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.
    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… (more)

    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.

    (see full details)
    View basket More details Price: £500.00