[Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE].

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Lot n° 19
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[Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE].
Justine ou les Malheurs de la vertu. En Hollande, chez les libraires associés [Paris, Girouard], 1791. 2 volumes in one in-8 : jansenist aubergine morocco, ribbed spine, gold filleted edges, inner lace, gilt edges (Petit). First edition of the first printed book of the Marquis de Sade, a young author of fifty-one years, recently released under the French Revolution. It is decorated with an allegorical frontispiece, engraved on copper by Carrée after P. Cherry, showing Virtue between Lust and Irreligion. Continuously disowned by its author, Justine caused a scandal, but was remarkably successful, as attested by the numerous reissues that followed one another from 1791 onwards. "Justine scandalizes, of course, but above all she frightens. Its publication provoked a panic effect. Very quickly, one feels that morals are not the only issue, that subversion goes far beyond obscenity, that the real danger lies elsewhere" (Maurice Lever). The Surrealists claimed this subversion, considering the Marquis de Sade to be one of their most important predecessors. "A man, who has long remained famous only for having attached his name to a depravity, a man whose conclusions in all fields are verified every day outside of his own premises, whose influence is growing and whom Baudelaire and Apollinaire have not been afraid to set aside, the Marquis de Sade [....] appears as the first incarnation of the revolutionary spirit that the 19th century did not manage to stifle" (Louis Aragon and André Breton, letter to Jacques Doucet, February 1922). A fine copy with large margins bound around 1880. From the library of Édith Piaf's lyricist, René Rouzaud, with bookplate "La Goualante". (Pia, Les Livres de l'Enfer, 388.- Delon, Sade, un athée en amour, Bibliothèque Bodmer, 2014, nº 100.- Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Les Choix de Pierre Leroy, 2016, nº 45.) "A Literary Storm in 1791" (Jean-Jacques Pauvert)
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