Nicolas Edme Rétif de la Bretonne. Le Pornographe. Bruxelles: Gay et Doucé, 1879.
Two parts in one with continuous pagination. pp. lvii, 213, with frontispeice etched by M. Chauvet. Printed on chainline-style paper. Bound in red publisher's cloth with title to spine panel. Top edge gilt, deckled fore edges. Some bumping to edges. Overall VERY GOOD condition.
Numbered 220 of 600.
Pornography is a neologism (or new word) that Nicolas-Edme Rétif de la Bretonne created-- using two Greek roots (porne: prostitute and graphein: to write)-- meaning one who writes about prostitutes. The original 1769 printing of this book is the origin of our modern term used to describe... well, you know it when you see it .
And indeed, Rétif wrote about prostitutes, but not pornographically, though he was compelled to originally publish under a pseudonym and false address to avoid censure. His work, however, advocates for the rights of sex workers, using details from letters from Madame des Tianges to sugguest a system of controled houses, regulated by police and doctors, endorsing accesss to food, laundry, hygiene, with guaranteed homes for the children of prostitutes. Rétif never descends in to lasciviousness, but rather is (albeit through clumsy prose) working through a new morality that includes this publically viewed 'immoral' occupation.
Rétif's Le Pornographe, despite its lack of titillating intention, however, is the work from which the Marquis de Sade "borrowed, rewrote, and distorted," for his La Philosophie dans le boudoir (Wyngaard, 2012). Rétif responded to Sade's likely use of his work through outrage and dismay as well as the publication of l'Anti-Justine; ou, Les Delices de l'amour-- a lengthy, explicit narrative of his own sexual experiences to rival de Sade in depravity, despite its original moral purpose to admonish de Sade's cruelty.