Manuel d'érotologie classique: (De figuris veneris)

Very good copy of FK Forberg's study of classical erotica, with 20 fine monochrome plates.

No. 210, of 340 examples on velin de cuve des Papeteries d'Arches, out of a total imprint of 500 copies.

Allegorical frontispiece with Venus, Cupid, Pan and Nereid, including a portrait of Forberg, and 19 illustrations by Paul Avril engraved by Théophile Fillon.

Chapter headings include de la Futution, de la Pedication, de l'Irrumation, de la Masturbation, des Cunnilinges, des Tribades, du Coit avec des Betes, des Postures spintriennes. The explicit illustrations depict the missionary position, masturbation, fellatio, cunnilingus, orgies, gay sex, Sappho on Lesbos, a Saturnalia, sodomy, Tiberius and the fishes, bestiality, etc., while the text provides literary examples from Virgil, Sappho, Ovid, Martial, Herodotus, etc.

Freidrich Karl Forberg (1770-1848), was a German philosopher and classical scholar, while working as a school headmaster and director of the Saxon State Library. His philosophical writings are now forgotten, but his erotic poem in Renaissance Latin Antonii Panormitae Hermaphroditus, published in 1824, live on. Forberg wrote his own commentary to the poem, later published separately as De figuris Veneris. This Manuel d'érotologie classique or Manual of classical erotology, was later republished in two volumes in French "imprimé à cent exemplaires pour Isidore Liseux et ses amis, Paris," in 1882 and in English "in 100 copies privately printed for Viscount Julian Smithson M. A. and friends, Manchester," 1884.

Edouard-Henri Avril (1849-1928) was a French painter, engraver, and etcher. Under the pen-name Paul Avril, he illustrated many books of erotica including Fanny Hill (1887), Une Nuit de Cleopatre (1894), Les Sonnets Luxurieux de l'Aretin (1904). Histoire de Saturnin (1908), etc.

Text translated from the Latin into French by Alcide Bonneau for publisher Isidore Liseux.

Binding of brown morocco with five-raised bands, slight bump to top right corner, gilt title on spine, marble boards and endpapers, t.e.g. Interior mostly fresh and clean, all text within decorative architectural borders of columns and friezes, a few finger smudges to the tissue guards, engraved plates very good.