25783 — A Rome (Paris or Neuchatel), De l'Imprimerie du Vatican, 1783. iv, 192 pp. 8vo. Contemporary half calf, spine gilt in compartments, marbled boards, small damage to head of spine. Kearney, Private Case, 1190; Kearney, History of Erotik Literature, p. 80; Darnton, The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 204; Pia, Enfer, 441; Gay-Lemonnyer, ii, p. 150-155. First edition (as distinguished from a counterfeit edition, also dated 1783, with different pagination). The work was divided between three printers in Switzerland (Fauche, Favre, and Vitel) and the book was condamned from the moment it appeared. It was reprinted in 1833 and again immediately forbidden. A notorious and often reprinted work, written by Mirabeau during his imprisonment in the castle of Vincennes, in an effort to portray the corruption and foibles of the clergy and royalty of past ages as affecting and limiting the freedoms of the common populace. According to Kearney, the book "was pursued with such vigour by the authorities that only fourteen copies of the first edition are supposed to have survived. As a compendium of curiosities culled from the pages of ancient writings it is possibly one of the most peculiar books ever put together and shows vividly the sort of eccentric bypaths that erudition and emotion can sometimes take when strangled by the confines of prison." The number of 14 copies is flawed but the first edition is a rather uncommon book.While Mirabeau was in prison he continued his studies and developed further his already impressive erudition. He also wrote, while in prison, another erotic book entitled "Ma Conversion".
