A Lively-Letter to a Lonely Lover - ONLY SURVIVING COPY?

Unique copy of a pornographic novel written in letter form by Louisiana-born ‘Madge Buford’ and addressed as a stimulant to her ‘lonely lover’, Captain Jack Gardner ‘way out in camp there in the Rocky Mountains’. Divided into 26 short chapters of non-stop debauchery, the heroine’s erotic adventures begin when she is rescued at 16 from the Convent of the Sacred-Heart in New York and taken to live on her uncle’s Louisiana plantation ‘among the palms, pelicans and bayous, where the half tropical sun breeds voluptuousness.’

We can’t locate the first edition in any library; a typescript of 134 leaves is held at the Kinsey institute (OCLC 45293545). Peter Mendes (Clandestine Erotic Fiction in English 1800-1930, Entry 77) cites the work from a manuscript library catalogue by Nicholas Brown but hadn’t seen it. The purported publication location in New Orleans is as unlikely as Ms Buford’s identity; Paris seems more probable although the advertisements for other titles to the rear - The Romance of My Alcove, The Frigging Countess and Kate Handcock - are priced in pounds, shillings and pence for the English-speaking market in erotica.

DESCRIPTION:

Small octavo, cloth-backed marbled boards with a red roan spine label; rubbing to marbling and bumps to corners. Endpapers adhered along gutter hinge for about 1cm to pastedown. Collates complete with half title, title page with small device and purported publication located in New Orleans: [5] pp6-146 [adverts] [6]. Toning and occasional marking to leaves; silk bookmark bound in. A very respectable copy of an unrespectable and very rare text.