Longus

1934 · réf. 002243 — France 1934. First Edition presumed. Wraps made of 18th Century French Vellum Documents. Near Fine. No text with fifteen color lithographed plates of a softcore sensibility with nudity. The only words in the story proper is the title rendered in Cyrillic. The illustrations are far from lewd yet do have a delicious kitschy quality of the second-rate book illustration and they were in their time meant to give the viewer a frisson of excitement from partaking of something mildly naughty and taboo. The illustrations feel anachronistic fitting more squarely in the twentieth century than the classical world being portrayed but perhaps that is also their charm. No one could find the illustrations pretentious or overblown and if nothing else they do capture a simplicity and innocence that are at the core of the tale. Perhaps the most special aspect of the booklet is the wraps or outer wraps to be precise made up of two sheets of vellum documents from the mid-18th century that may have come from a Royal Archive. These sheets were clearly meant to conceal the erotic contents. One of the documents is signed Besnard P and is a letter dated 25 9bre 1734 with a seal of the city of Rouen. Back to the Daphis and Chloe a few of the plates bear a stylized device of what appears to be "LG" and above the date of 1934. unknown