The 120 Days of Sodom, or: The Romance of The School for Libertinage.

DE SADE, D.A.F.; Pieralessandro CASAVINO, Trans. [Austryn WAINHOUSE, Pseud.]

Date d'édition : 1962

A propos de cet article

Paris: The Olympia Press. 1962. Small format 8vo., 3 vols; original green card covers, ruled and lettered in black and white; pp. [vi], 7-191, [i]; [vi], 7-203, [v]; [vi], 7-223, [i] title pages with border in green; very good copies all, covers with some rubbing to folds and spine tips and a little shelf darkening inplaces; ink and pencil markings to ffeps; '3' written in ink to half title of Vol I; light marginal toning.First English edition, second issue, printed in 1962 by Imprimerie Moderne du Lion, Paris, and with the green borders to the title pages. No. 50 in the Traveller's Companion Series, priced NF54 for the three volumes. Translated from the French by Pieralessandro Casavino with an essay by Georges Bataille.The 'first complete and integral rendering to be presented in English' of Les Journees de Sodome, the infamous unfinished work by the Marquis de Sade, originally written in 1785. Believed lost, it was unpublished until 1904, when the manuscript was rediscovered. In it, four wealthy frenchmen seal themselves inside a castle with 20 victims, 12 accomplices, and 10 servants, immersing themselves in every kind of sexual deviance including coprophilia, necrophilia, bestiality, incest and rape. Written on a single scroll over a period of 37 days while the author was imprisoned in Bastille, it was unsurprisingly banned throughout Europe until the 1960s, and even then the Olympia Press translation was forbidden in almost all English-speaking countries. Remaining divisive today, the French philosopher Georges Bataille wrote that it "towers above all other books in that it represents man's fundamental desire for freedom that he is obliged to contain and keep quiet".Kearney (p. 78-9).

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Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: The 120 Days of Sodom, or: The Romance of The School for Libertinage.
• Date de parution: 1962
• Édition: Edition originale