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Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

Fraxi, Pisanus (pseudonym Ashbee, Henry Spencer) Quarter leather over red marbled boards. 4to. [lxxvi] 542pp [2]. Top edge gilt, others untrimmed. Title in gilt to spine. Text in black and red. All edges rubbed with an old near vertical scratch to front cover. Front free end paper and first blank leaf loose. Henry Spencer Ashbee was a book collector, writer, and bibliographer. He is notable for his massive, clandestine three-volume bibliography of erotic literature published under the pseudonym of Pisanus Fraxi. The title of the work is Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being Notes Bio-Biblio-Icono-graphical and Critical, on Curious and Uncommon Books. It has an engraved frontispiece and reproduces by photolithography occasional facsimile pages from works which it discusses in its text. Its author listed himself on the title page as Pisanus Fraxi. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum–the title of course is humorously annexed from the Roman Catholic organ of censorship–is the first bibliography in the English language devoted to writings of a pornographic or sexual character. But the Index is itself the first part of a work, for in 1879 there followed a second, companion volume, Centuria Librorum Absconditorum, and in 1885 Pisanus Fraxi completed his project with a third volume, entitled, Catena Librorum Tacendorum. Pisanus Fraxi was the pseudonym of Henry Spencer Ashbee. Ashbee distinguishes himself from most previous bibliographers by virtue of the attention he gives to the contents of the books he examined. - Steven Marcus, The Other Victorians.
  • $300