SADE (Donation-Alphonse-François de). Les 120journées de Sod - Lot 20

SADE (Donation-Alphonse-François de). Les 120journées de Sodome ou l'École du libertinage. Paris, Club des bibliophiles [i.e. Berlin, Max Harrwitz], 1904. Large in-8, (8)-543-(one)pp. paperback, in a modern green-gray cloth slipcase with paper title-piece on spine. First edition printed in an edition of 200, this one of 160 numbered copies on vergé à la forme (Dutel, n°131; Éros invaincu, n°47). "If there is a hell in the libraries, it is for such a book. One can admit that, in no literature of any time, has there been such a scandalous work, that no other has so deeply wounded the feelings and thoughts of men" (Maurice Blanchot). The manuscript of this novel had an eventful history: written at the Bastille in the spectacular form of a long, narrow scroll with tiny handwriting, it was left in this prison in 1789 when the Marquis de Sade was transferred to Charenton. It disappeared in the looting that followed the storming of the Bastille, and ended up in the library of the Marquis de Villeneuve-Trans. Word of its existence reached Henry Ashbee, who mentioned it in 1877 in his Index librorum prohibitorum. It then entered the collection of German sexologist Iwan Bloch (1872-1922), author of a biography of Sade, who made the present transcription, accompanied by personal notes. It then passed into the library of Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, where Maurice Heine studied it before publishing a second edition (1935, dated 1931). The manuscript scroll later found its way to the Genevan industrialist Gérard Nordmann and, after a number of twists and turns, entered the collections of the BnF.