Le Marquis de Sade et Son Temps, Etudes relatives a L'histoire de la Civilisation et des Moeurs du XVIIIe Siecle

Paris / Berlin: A. Michelon / Barsdorf, 1901. First French Edition. Softcover. Good. 8vo 8" - 9" tall. From the personal library of the erotophile and folklorist/bibliographer Gershon Legman as conveyed to me through his fabulous widow, Judith Evans Legman. A piercing, learned disquisition on the life and practices of the Marquis de Sade by Eugene Duehren, the pseudonym of Iwan Bloch, the German historian of magisterial studies of social issues. Sturdy, attractive, tightly bound softcover copy, with clean, if lightly toned interior, minimal rubbing to extremities, a rose floral-pattern wrap, quite unusual, over the original tan paper wrappers as issued. Preface d’Octave Uzanne. Published near simultaneously in Berlin and Paris in 1901. First French Edition, translated from the original German by Dr. A. Weber-Riga. Work published for the first time in 1900, the year prior, under the title: "Der Marquis de Sade und seine Zeit." A publisher's blurb has it that "Doctor Eugene Duehren [the pen name of Iwan Bloch] wanted to know in all its extent and depth the ground on which germinated and grew, monstrous, this flower of the evil which was named the Marquis de Sade. Nothing of what surrounded its habitat, of what feeds it with its poisonous juice has escaped this wise historian." Fine and detailed index and bibliography. Alphabetical listing of works. Iwan Bloch (8 April 1872 – 21 November 1922), also known as Ivan Bloch, practiced dermatology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis in Germany and is sometimes dubbed "the first sexologist," perhaps alongside Magnus Hirschfield and Albert Eulenburg and together proposed Sexualwissenschaft, the new concept of a science of sexualit. He discovered the Marquis de Sade's manuscript of The 120 Days of Sodom and published it under the pseudonym Eugene Duehren in 1904, too. xxxiii-501 pp.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. Additional postage may be required for oversize or especially heavy volumes, and for sets.