[Sade, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de]

Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la vertue. En Hollande: chez les libraires associés [Paris: J.V. Girouard], 1791

2 volumes in one, first: 8vo (8 3/8 x 5 3/8 in.; 210 x 135 mm) and second: 12mo (5 5/8 x 3 1/2 in.; 142 x 88 mm) inlaid to match the first. Allegorical frontispiece of "virtue between lewdness and atheism" engraved by Carré after Philippe Chery with quotation from J.F. Ducis play Oedipe chez Admète (first performed 1778), woodcut allegorical title vignette on each title, collation: I: ()¹, A⁴, B-S⁸, T²=143 leaves, paginated 3-283, "Explication de la Stampe" leaf in reduced format mounted on title verso, II: ()¹, A-S^8.4, T⁶=115 leaves, paginated "1-228", some leaves printed on pale blue paper; in first volume frontispiece and first quire detached, lacking the "avis de l'éditeur" as in nearly all copies (Delon p. 1219), small stain in lower gutter margin in a few quires (B-D, G-H, lower margin of F), occasional rust spot or light marginal spotting, light dampstain in fore-margin of leaf F2 which is slightly frayed, paper flaw lower outer corner of leaf F, quires G & M lightly browned, fore-margin dampstain in leaf R2, worm puncture in lower outer margin quires R-T, soiled toward the beginning, in second volume half-title and all illustrations lacking. Mid 19th-century decorated paper wrapper with original (?) printed title label on spine; sewing weak and book block becoming detached, wrappers scuffed and creased, but apart from these minor flaws, a clean and crisp copy.

Dutel A-593 & 594; Cohen-DeRicci 919 - 920; M. Delon, notes to the Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres, vol. 2 (1995); Gay-Lemonnyer 2: 752; on the author see M. Lever, Marquis de Sade: a biography (1993); L. Bongie, Sade: a biographical Essay (1998); F. Du Plessix Gray, At Home with the Marquis de Sade (1998); F. Laugaa-Traut, Lectures de Sade (1973); J. Phillips, The Marquis de Sade: a very short introduction (2005).

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The first published book by the Marquis de Sade, here in a mixed edition consisting of the first edition of the first volume and the superlatively rare second edition of the second volume,

“The police tolerate everything; the only thing they don’t tolerate is insults to whores. One can be capable of all possible injuries and infamies, as long as one respects whores’ asses ... that’s what I must try myself when I get out of here, put myself under police protection. I have an ass like a whore’s, and I’d be grateful if it could be respected.” – Letter to his wife, 1783

Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) is a symbolic figure who transcends history as "the embodiment of evil" because his books have been mistaken for his life; it is only in the last two decades, with the discovery and publication of his family’s archive, that we have a clearer impression of the man.  Scion of an ancient noble Provençal family, brought up by his father (an enthusiastic libertine who married his mother in order to have better access to the bedchamber of her employer the Duchess of Condé), he spent his youth and young adulthood pursuing actresses, dancers and renowned courtesans, as did most other noblemen under the reign of Louis XV, which monarch enjoyed reading about his subjects sexual exploits in the reports of the ever-watchful Police Inspector Louis Marais. Marrying, with great difficulty and after elaborate negotiations, into a family of lesser nobility but much greater wealth, his life was thereafter managed by his mother-in-law. Responding to three libertine incidents that became public knowledge, involving blasphemy, sodomy and flagellation with working-class prostitutes and teenagers who complained to the police, she used her access to the King to obtain lettres de cachet (removing him from local legal jurisdiction) at first to protect his, and later her family’s reputation, keeping him imprisoned (at family expense) for a total of 13 years. With the abolition of that legal instrument in 1790 he was released, thriving in various revolutionary capacities under his classmate Robespierre and after, until he was arrested by Napoleon’s vice squad in 1801 at the office of his publisher, and committed to the enlightened sanatorium of Charenton for the 13 remaining years of his life.

To judge from his letters, the Marquis was a charming martinet, opinionated, dogmatic, a narcissistic infant given to playing roles to manipulate people. Rediscovered by psychoanalysts for his revolutionary exploration of hidden inclinations which we call the “subconscious” and the conflict between the erotic and the destructive which molds the personality; lionized by the Surrealists for his uncompromising expression of personal freedom in the face of societal strictures; he is seen as the principal forerunner of literary modernism in avoiding the authorial pleasure of traditional narrative to insult, alienate and bore the reader, never revealing whether he intends his text to be understood ironically or literally.

Justine, his most famous and influential work, a greatly-expanded version of a novella he wrote while in the Bastille, is the harrowing story of a 14-year old orphan of uncompromising virtue who, over the course of ten years, is captured and abused by a succession of amoral libertines.  The work reads like a symposium in moral philosophy whose interlocutors (all of whom have the same learned voice whether male or female, young or old), take time out from their discourse for increasingly extravagant and brutal sex scenes presented in the allusive and metaphoric language of the period. Structurally based on Candide  in the interminable suffering of the innocent heroine in a world of corruption, it argues that those who hold virtue as an ideal are doomed to poverty and abuse, while those who acquiesce in vice become rich and successful. The work was so popular that it appeared in seven further editions in the course of ten years.

The first edition was not illustrated save for the frontispiece. The second edition which appeared the same year in reduced format but without alteration of the text (save for a few lines added to the end of the “avis de l’éditeur”), was adorned with twelve engraved illustrations, lacking in the present copy.

Though suppressed under the Consulate and Napoleonic periods, Sade’s works led a clandestine existence. Between 1798 and 1801 several Parisian newspapers publicly speculated on the identity of the author of Justine, leading to his final arrest, and formulating the author’s image as a monster based solely on the characters in his books. Thus was he represented in the early 19^th century biographical dictionaries (Barbier, Pigoreau). The Romantic Movement saw him as an exceptional figure of pure evil or pure good that transcended the petty values of their own dull age. As a “Gothic” novelist he supported the taste for sensationalism and horror which fueled their imaginations, and as a prisoner he benefited by association with the myth of the Bastille, symbol of individual repression. His influence on the Romantic movement has been seen in Lamartine’s poem “La Chute d’un Ange” (1838), Chateaubriand’s Les Martyrs (1809), and Petrus Borel’s Madame Putiphar (1839).  He was admired by  the young Flaubert who, already in 1839, found it hard to obtain any of his works: "Speaking of the Marquis de Sade ... if you could find me some of that honorable author's novels I would pay you their weight in gold" (Bruneau ed., Correspondance, Paris: 1973, 1:48).

This early fascination and scarcity suggests why it was necessary to create the present composite volume. The binding must be dated after 1832 as the rear cover is stuffed with the title page of the tract Religion Saint-Simonienne. A Tous. [Paris: a la librairie Saint-Simonienne, 1832].

The first edition of Justine has appeared at auction six times in the past 35 years, the second edition has appeared three times in that period of which one copy lacked its illustrations (“Cette édition est de la plus grande rareté avec les figures complètes”  Cohen 920). OCLC reports 6 copies of the first edition, and only one of the second (British Library).

A fascinating copy of a classic of world literature.