Giovanni. Pasquerella and Madonna Babetta.

by BOCCACCIO

£500 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Yiddish Pulp Fiction Disguised as Boccaccio? BOCCACCIO, Giovanni. Pasquerella and Madonna Babetta. New York: [Golden Hind Press for] the subscribers of the Biblion Society . 1927. 4to. Publisher’s black cloth, spine label printed in red; pp. 47, [1 (advertisements)], in the rare printed dust-jacket; title-page and first page of text printed in pale blue and pink; slight soiling and a few marks to dust-jacket, spine ends and extremities lightly worn; a near-fine copy in a good jacket. First edition of these spurious translations of Boccaccio involving accidental mother–son incest and friendship between Catholics and Protestants (despite the fact that Boccaccio died a century before Luther’s birth), falsely claiming to be illustrated with ‘new sketches’ by Beardsley, this copy in the rare dust-jacket. This edition was distributed by the Golden Hind Press for subscribers of the Biblion Society, both operated by notorious publisher Samuel Roth. He would later be the plaintiff in the landmark 1957 Supreme Court case Roth vs United States, which redefined what constituted obscene material unprotected by First Amendment rights. In 1930, he spent two months in prison for selling obscene material, including Joyce’s Ulysses, which he had published in serialised, bowdlerised form without Joyce’s permission two years earlier.The present edition claims to present several hitherto unpublished illustrations by Beardsley, each captioned ‘New Sketch’. All, in fact, had been previously publish

• Binding: Hardcover

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