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THE EARLIEST SURVIVING PRINTED WORK OF PORNOGRAPHIC LITERATURE. THE NOTORIOUS PUTTANA ERRANTE. Octavo (153 × 95mm.), three parts in one, pp. 541, [3]; 54, [2]. A-2L8, Aa-Cc8, Dd4 (2L8 and Dd4 blank). Roman and italic type. Titles of first two parts, the Ragionamenti, with typographical ornaments; La Puttana Errante with half-title and title with no bibliographical information, small floriated woodcut initials, grotesque tail pieces, typographical ornaments. In fine contemporary vellum over thin paper boards, yapp edges. Very rare marginal spotting in places. Small cracks to upper joint. A fine copy, crisp and clean. FIRST EDITION, very rare and a fine copy, of the earliest surviving printed work of pornographic literature. "The first imaginative prose work that deals directly and exclusively with physical sexual satisfaction" (Foxon p. 27). THE TRUE FIRST EDITION Two separate editions of Aretino's Ragionamenti were published by the Elzevier press, both with a new text appended, the Puttana Errante. Willems convincingly argues in his lengthy descriptions of this work, that of the two separate editions, the first was printed at Leiden by Jean Elzevier, and the second was printed eight years later by Daniel Elzevier at Amsterdam. The first edition of La Puttana Errante, in 54 pages, was added at the end of some, but by no means all, copies of the first printing of the Ragionamenti. It was however clearly intended to be an integral part of the first edition as it is printed on identical paper, using the same type, with the same number of lines (31). The second edition of the Ragionamenti was set up nearly identically to the first, but the second edition of the Puttana Errante was reset in 38 pages. Willems resolved the priority between the two editions by comparing the type and ornaments, and concluded that the second edition must have been printed in 1668, as it appears in Daniel Elzevier's catalogue of 1674 with that date, which he believes was most probably the correct date of printing. The printing of the first edition is finer than the second ("La plus belle" - Willems), and is easily identified by the finer type, which uses an elongated form of the letter x. "La Puttana Errante, overo dialogo di Madalena e? Giulia claims to be by Aretino and follows the same dialogue form as the Ragionamenti in which the elder woman takes the greater share: but it is almost entirely devoted to Madalena's sexual autobiography as a thread on which to hang most of the possible positions for sexual intercourse. It is the first imaginative prose work which deals directly and exclusively with physical sexual satisfaction, though this is garnished rather sparsely with some moments of emotion and glimpses of ordinary life. It ends with a named catalogue of thirty-five postures, which explains why sets of plates became associated with it; it might originally have been written as an explanatory text to pictures, but its origins are obscure. Modern authorities all agree that it is not by Aretino, and the first edition under this title seems to be an undated Elzevir edition, printed to accompany a new edition of the Ragionamenti in 1660. The appearance in London of John Garfield's periodical The Wandering Whore at the end of 1660 tends to confirm that date, for evidence over the next hundred years shows a very brief time lag between a Continental publication and its English repercussion. Garfield's work had no connection with the text of La Puttana Errante: he was clearly cashing-in on a new and notorious title" (Foxon pp. 27-28). The influence of La Puttana Errante was enormous and the book seems to have been very widely read, including in England, although no 17th century English translation is known to have survived. "The earliest specific reference I know to a pornographic book [in England] is in Pepy's diary. On 13th January 1668 he 'stopped at . . . (FULL DESCRIPTION ON REQUEST).
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