[Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE].

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  3. [Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE].
  4. Lot n° 20 
Lot n° 20
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[Donatien Alphonse François, marquis de SADE].
Philosophy in the Boudoir, a posthumous work by the author of Justine. The mother will prescribe its reading to her daughter. In London, at the expense of the Company, 1795. 2 volumes in one in-12 : basane racinée, smooth spine richly decorated, title and tomaison in light blue calf, gilt border on the boards, decorated edges, gilt edges (slightly later binding). First edition dedicated "To the libertines": it is illustrated with a frontispiece and four erotic copper-engraved fi gures, out of the text. Anonymous collection of seven philosophical dialogues "of a total freedom of language and whose retorts often form real dissertations where metaphysics, morals and history are intertwined with sexology" (Gilbert Lély). The fifth dialogue is a revolutionary pamphlet entitled: Frenchmen, one more effort if you want to be republicans. The oppressions imposed by society on individuals are stigmatized. The Revolution is summoned to take into account the liberation of passions, however negative and perverse they may be. "Petits romantiques and Surrealists have read La Philosophie dans le boudoir as a great poem of desire; governments for two centuries have preferred to see in it only pornography, the distribution of which they have repressed, and which they have dedicated to the Hell of the libraries" (Michel Delon) A very nice copy. The binding could have been executed in Germany around 1810. According to a pencil note at the head, this is Alfred Bégis' copy. (Bibliothèque nationale, En français dans le texte, Paris, 1990, nº 195.- Pia, Les Livres de l'Enfer, 593: "It will be noticed that the work, attributed to 'the author of Justine', is qualified as posthumous. Sade was alive and well, but, as noted by Gilbert Lély [...], by this deception, he opened the 'refuge of the tomb' and associated the fortune of his new book with the fame of a novel whose three years of active sales had not dried up its success." "Voluptuous people of all ages and sexes, it is to you alone that I offer this work."
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