Not sold anywhere
VERLAINE, Paul. Hombres (Hommes). [Paris:] ‘Imprimé à Stamboul sous le manteau du Calife Mahomet l’année de l’Hegire 1327’. [1909.]
Small quarto. Original brown wrappers with fold-over flaps, front cover lettered in red and bordered in black; previous ownership inscription in pencil to front fly leaf (see below); pp. 52; covers ever so slighly soiled with very minimal sunning to spine, otherwise near fine.
Scarce second edition of this scandalous collection of erotic poetry, including ‘Le Sonnet du trou du cul’ (The Sonnet to an Asshole), a collaborative poem by Verlaine and his lover Arthur Rimbaud.
The collection Hombres was explicitly inspired by Paul Verlaine’s turbulant, passionate love affair with Arthur Rimbaud, whom he infamously shot and wounded. It is the third work in Verlaine’s Erotic Trilogy, after Les Amies (1867) and Femmes (1895).
Published posthumously in 1903, seven years after the author’s death, it omitted the date and place of publication to elude censorship and police intervention. This 1909 second edition, similarly undated and unsourced, was limited to just 207 copies (‘trois fois 69’). This copy, number 10, belonged to John Hayward, potentially identifiable as the English editor, critic, anthologist, and bibliophile (see pencil annotations to front fly-leaf).,
The statement 'Ne se vend nulle part' (Not sold anywhere) on the book's title-page underscores its illicit contents.
#2120831