Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction; With Some Account of the Judicial "Congress" as Practiced In France During the Seventeenth Century.
London: Privately Printed, 1869. First edition. Hardcover. Small quarto. xii + 154pp, ip advert. Leather spine ruled and titled in gilt, matching papered boards, marbled endpapers. Seven pages of b&w plates. A series of three essays on matters sexual by John Davenport (1789-1877) a writer who has been somewhat unkindly described as a "semi-learned pornographic hack". The essay's titles are relatively self explanatory: "Ancient Phallic Worship" is a sort of introductory to the subject of phallicism in ancient belief; "Anaphrodisia, or Absence of the productive power" deals with the subject of impotence, and "Aphrodisiacs and anti-aphrodisiacs" is exactly as the title suggests. The book was prepared for publication by John Camden Hotten (1832-1873) an English bookseller and publisher best known for his involvement in the clandestine publishing of a variety of works then regarded as pornographic or obscene, including the 1865 reprint of Richard Payne Knight's "A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus." According to Boase Hotten prepared Davenport's book for press, and it was privately printed in 1869, it was "not really issued" until after Hotten's death in 1873. Boards rubbed and chafed, damp mark to lower edge of rear board, all edges & extremities chafed, spine ends and corners bruised and rubbed with minor loss at corners, bookplate on front pastedown, page edges a bit darkened and pages are toned with some scattered foxing and light marks from handling, very light tide marks to extreme upper edge of rear blanks. Obviously well-read but still a tight, unmarked about VG copy. Item #66254
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