•  Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 1612. Not in Medina, Mexico; not in Sutro. One horizontal fold; right margin a little crumpled. Revenue stamps on the verso. Viceroy Venegas’s paraph (“rúbrica”) below his printed name. A very good copy.

Histoire de l'oeil was translated from the French as A tale of satisfied desire by “Audiart,” a pseudonym for Austryn Wainhouse (a.k.a. Pieralessandro Casavini), an American Harvard graduate employed by the Olympia Press in Paris who received the National Book Award in 1972 for his translation of Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity. Adapted from Bataille's revised text, first printed in 1944 — the second version, and standard French edition — this translation appeared about the same time as the third French edition. Bataille worked on other projects with both Wainhouse and Maurice Girodias, founder of the Olympia Press, and probably knew of this translation.

The Olympia Press specialized in providing the types of books that would be automatically banned in Britain and the United States. The first to publish Nabokov's Lolita and Donleavy's Ginger Man, Olympia also printed numerous exuberantly pornographic works penned pseudonymously by members of the Paris expatriate community, as well as avant-garde and controversial works by prominent Beat writers including William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso.

Scarce: WorldCat locates just two copies in the U.S.

•  D. Cullen, ed., “Bataille's Eye & ICI Field Notes 4,” The Institute of Cultural Inquiry (1997), p. 25. On this work as censored, see: L. Sigel, International exposure: perspectives on modern European pornography, 1800–2000, pp. 129–30.   Publisher's mustard-colored wrappers printed in black, with white stars and bars; extremities rubbed, wrappers a little scuffed, inside like new.  (30200)

Presented here is Gómez Farías’ side of things, in a very uneditorialized manner.

At the top of the title-page: “Juicio de imprenta.”

• Sewn as issued, lacking front wrapper but rear one present. A good+ copy.

Four volumes in one as issued; each piece was printed in a limited edition of 900 copies.

•  Publisher's blue-green cloth, spine with gilt-stamped Art Nouveau-style title and mermaid decoration; dust jacket lacking, binding a little soiled and slightly cocked with edges and extremities lightly rubbed, corners and center of back cover at top bumped, spine darkened. Pages gently age-toned, otherwise clean. A decent “used” book.  (29695)

The Explicationes was a serious attack on the Trinity and all its editions, beginning with the first of 1598, were surreptitiously printed and circulated. It was on various lists of banned books.

Click the images for enlargements.

The imprint of this edition is from Johann Fabricius' Historia Bibliothecae Fabricianae, V, 51; the title-page device is particularly lovely.

Evidence of readership: A lengthy note in an 18th-century hand on the front fly-leaf, apparently citing Johann Vogt's 1738 Catalogus historico-criticus librorum rariorum, labels this work “Liber perniciosus” and has much to say about it and its early editions. An earlier hand has recorded a list of books/citations inside the front cover.

•  Szabó, Régi magyar könyvtár, III, 4237.   18th-century English calf in the Cambridge style, leather at joints (but not sewing) starting; call number neatly in white in one lower spine panel. Private library bookplate; 18th-century ownership inscription partially erased from verso of title; handwritten notes as above. Title-page with a bit of dust-soiling and off-setting from binding at edges; otherwise, spotting never dark and mostly marginal.  (27172)

•  Removed from a nonce volume; respined with archival tissue. (576)

The typography is exquisite and Hervagius has enhanced the presentation on the page with attractive decorative headpieces, including one that spans the page and depicts a group of six peasants dancing to the tune of a man playing a flute or “pipe.”

Binding:  16th-century calf over wood boards, covers elaborately tooled to produce an interesting embossed binding of concentric panels: Used are a single fillet (repeatedly, usually in triplets) and a roll featuring urns, flowers, and putti.

Provenance:  Late-17th- / early-18th-century ownership signature of “Pet. Wedderburn; 18th-century bookplate of Lord Eliock; later pencilled signature of “[?].T. Coleridge” (not Samuel Taylor Coleridge; possibly, however, Justice John Coleridge). At back, “Ex dono D. Al: Brown, M.D.” and another ownership inscription entirely in Greek.

•  Darlow & Moule 4614; Dibdin (4th ed.), An Introduction to...Greek and Latin Classics, 86; Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 224; VD16 B2576; Adams B978.   Bound as above; rebacked and edges and corners renewed, with remains of brass clasps. Endpaper reattached. Title-page cut down and mounted. There are a very few instances of old marginalia. A very clean, handsome copy.  (2416)

Moreover, Calleja labels all signatories to the “monstrous” constitution as rebels, traitors, infamous, and schismatics. They arespecifically named in one section of this broadside, their names set forth clearly in italic type.

We trace only one copy worldwide.

•  Not in Garritz, Impresos novohispanos; not in Harper, Americana Iberica; not in Sutro.   Very good condition. Printed on three sheets and glued together to form the whole. One sheet is blue paper. A significant document issued at a significant moment, and an impressive display piece.  (27947)

Some of the wit here is directed against the Catholic Church, and the Epigrammata was to find itself on the Index in 1654.

Binding:  18th-century tan morocco framed in triple gilt fillets with gilt-stamped corner fleurons, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label and gilt-stamped floral compartment decorations, board edges and turn-ins with gilt roll. Marbled endpapers; all edges gilt.

•  Graesse, V, 98; Willems 1051.   Bound as above; moderately rubbed with a bit of leather lost at one corner, minor spots of discoloration to covers. A few leaves with light staining confined to upper margins, otherwise clean.  (27389)

Click either image for an enlargement.

Provenance: Pencilled note on endpaper, “From Ralph E. McCoy’s Library”; McCoy, emeritus Dean of Libraries at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, published widely on the First Amendment freedoms.

•  Howes C336; Sabin 12379; Shaw & Shoemaker 17193. Later quarter plain brown paper over contemporary tan paper–covered sides; edges and corners rubbed. Front free endpaper (modern) with pencilled note of McCoy’s ownership; front fly-leaf with pencilled gift inscription dated 1849. Offsetting and foxing throughout. A very sound copy.

•  Sutro 756 ("19p." being a typographical error for collation given here); not in Steele, Independent Mexico: A Collection of Mexican Pamphlets in the Bodleian Library. Folded and never sewn or bound; as issued.

This contemporary file copy was retained in Rome and signed “S. Card. S. Susannae” (i.e., Cardinal Scipione Cobelluzzi, who was also at this time the Librarian of the Vatican Library).

•  Written in a very handsome italic on very good quality vellum. Light discoloration along lower edge, below the writing.  (26978)

•  NSTC 2P27024. On Prinsep, see: DNB. Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly age-toned. Traces of soiling and small inked numeral on title-page. A few instances of pencilled sidelining.

Uncommon: No U.S. copy of this issue located via OCLC and ESTC locates only the Harvard copy. There were other, less complete editions of 40 pp., 58 pp., and 78 pp.

•  ESTC N15187.   Recent full calf, period style; spine with raised bands accented in gilt, oxblood leather gilt-lettered title, publication date and place in gilt at base; covers framed and paneled in gilt rules with gilt-stamped corner fleurons. Shallow chip to top outer corners of final two leaves. One word on p. 32 is blotted out in ink by an early owner with the correction supplied above it. Penned signature (partly cropped) at top edge of p. 79. Pp. 79–92 duplicated, nothing missing.  (23766)

Uncommon: OCLC locates only the copies at the Bancroft and Chilean National libraries; although, clearly, there is or was one in the Sutro Library.

•  Sutro 175.   Removed from a nonce volume. A good clean copy.  (21742)

Also attracting renewed interest was The Declaration of Independence: Americans and especially several entrepreneurs rediscovered the majesty of it and its wording. But it was not the Declaration as it came from a printing press that was of interest, rather it was the version indited by Charles Thomson, the Secretary of the Continental Congress. Coincidentally, this interest in the manuscript coincided with an upswing in the general upspringing writing masters and the publication of writing books that taught clerks, storekeepers, secretaries, and the interested populace how to write clearly and elegantly.

One of those entrepreneurial writing masters was Benjamin Owen Tyler and in 1818 he publishedthe first facsimile of the Declaration in its manuscript form. In 1817 he travelled to Washington and obtained the permission of Acting Secretary of State Richard Rush (son of Signer Benjamin Rush) to have access to the original manuscript so that he could engross his facsimile. As the facsimile proclaims: “The publisher designed and executed the ornamental writing, and has been particular to copy the facsimilies exact, and has also observed the same punctuation, and copied every capital as in the original.” The engraving also contains in attestation a facsimile signed statement of Richard Rush dated 10 September 10 and the seal of the Secretary of State's Office authenticating the copy.

The Tyler Declaration is not a one-to-one reproduction of the 1776 manuscript, for it incorporates decorative lettering not found in Thomson's original. But it certainly gives a feel for the original and it was a great advertising vehicle for Tyler as a writing master.

The whole LARGE production wasengraved by Peter Maverick, one of America's master engravers, and printed on paper with a few copies on parchment and at least one on silk. Many other facsimiles would follow. . .

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 46130.; Nash 87; John Bidwell, “American History in Image and Text” in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 1988, Vol. 98, pp. 247–302.   Document backed onto linen, edged with red linen tape, well-attached to an ebonized wood molding at head and roller at foot; age-toned or possibly showing discoloration from the mounting adhesive. One small piece of blank margin expertly readhered; some creasing. Overall very good. An impressive American document evoking not one but two significant patriotic periods, and one in safe and attractive condition for display.   (In its picture, it's hanging for the time being on one of our shop walls — comfortably!)   (29408)

The signers' facsimile signatures appear below the main italic text and within the decorative border.

Bidwell and WorldCat locateonly five institutional copies, none west of Charlottesville, VA.

•  Bidwell, “American history in image and text” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, v. 98, pt. 2, 1988), 15; Printing the Mind of Man 220 (for first edition).   Printed on white-coated card stock. Very Good condition.  (28506)

At the heart of the controversy was Duane’s support of Jefferson for president and his exposure of the notorious Ross election bill by which the Federalists sought to thwart Jefferson’s bid for that office.

• Evans 38856; ESTC W021879. Removed from a nonce volume. Clean and in nice condition.