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Atomic Horror Comic
Read MoreNicky Gray; Sarah Curtis; Bob Clutterbuck; Ian McCorist; Moll
Melbourne: Walker Press, 1977.Anti-nuclear comic addressing uranium mining in Australia, Aboriginal land rights, and radioactive waste, including the Rum Jungle uranium mine and its contaminated tailings. Combines comic-strip illustration by Moll with informational text panels presenting historical and scientific context, situating Australian concerns within the broader global nuclear narrative. Published during a high point of Australian anti-uranium activism, as campaigns against mining on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory intensified. A representative example of the activist comix tradition, using the underground format for political education rather than pure satire.
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Saphir ou le journal de Gilles
Read MoreVirginie Hell
Paris: Presses du Livre Francais, 1949.A surrealist sapphic novel from Francois Di Dio’s avant-garde Paris imprint, Presses du Livre Francais, the year before he launched Le Soleil Noir collection.
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Douze Sonnets lascifs pour accompagner la suite d’aquarelles intitulee Les Delassements d’Eros
Read MoreAlexandre de Verineau [Louis Perceau]; [Gerda Wegener]
Erotopolis [Paris]: A L’Enseigne du Faune [Maurice Duflou], 1925.Clandestine Parisian production pairing the brightly coloured erotic and lesbian illustrations of Gerda Wegener with poetic text by Louis Perceau. Wegener’s illustrations had previously been published without the text in 1917, the pair appearing here together for the first time. [“Faced with the difficulty of selling these illustrations alone, the publisher called upon Louis Perceau in 1925, who composed Twelve Lascivious Sonnets to accompany these plates.”] DUTEL 1434.
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The Electric Automobile: Its Construction, Care and Operation
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartC. E. Woods
Chicago and New York: Herbert S. Stone & Company, 1900.One of the earliest monographs devoted to electric vehicles, covering their construction, maintenance, and practical operation at a time when electrics were serious competitors to petrol-powered cars. Clinton Edgar Woods (1863-1927), an electrical and mechanical engineer, founded the Woods Motor Vehicle Company in Chicago in 1896 and was a committed advocate of electric propulsion, anticipating that both electric and gasoline vehicles would displace horse-drawn transport. Writing at a moment when the relative futures of electric and gasoline power remained uncertain (though the limitations of battery range were already apparent) Woods expresses a cautious scepticism that would, for much of the following century, be borne out by the dominance of the internal combustion engine. “Will not a battery some time be made to run a vehicle 100 or more miles on one charge? While this may be possible, the writer hardly thinks it probable.”
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Car Lovers
Read MoreAdina Yurana
Sydney: Howard Publications, 1972.The high point of Howard Publications 1970s Australian erotica output, a fully illustrated exploration of the car’s influence on man’s sexual behaviour. Lengthy text by Adina Yurana accompanies five photographic series of couples making love in and on their cars in Australia’s great outdoors. Featuring a Mercedes-Benz 280C (The Limousine Lover), a Ford Falcon 500 (The Countryman), a Nissan Patrol (The Great White Hunter), and a Meyers Manx dune buggy (Beachbuggy).
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![Lesbian Letters Issue No. 1 [&] Issue No. 2](https://www.thebookmerchantjenkins.com/wp-content/uploads/0037311-300x300.jpg)
Lesbian Letters Issue No. 1 [&] Issue No. 2
Read MoreHera
Toronto: Stewart Gordon Publications, 1967.Pre-Stonewall lesbian periodical (complete in two parts) published under the pseudonymous editorship of “Hera,” comprising confessional-style narratives presented as authentic letters from lesbian correspondents. Includes purportedly authentic but likely fictionalised first-person accounts of lesbian desire, seduction, and relationships, alongside an advice column attributed to “Dr. G. Klow.” Published by Stewart Gordon Publications, a Toronto and New York erotica house also responsible for editions of de Sade. The publication follows the conventions of 1960s commercial sleaze, with pseudonymous authorship and a thin clinical veneer. A relatively refined example of sensationalist lesbian-themed print culture, adopting a more polished tone while remaining within the conventions of male-oriented commercial erotica.
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The Gay Haunt
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartVictor Jay
New York: The Olympia Press, 1970.Gay pulp fiction by Victor J. Banis under his Victor Jay pseudonym, one of several he employed for his prolific output of gay paperback fiction in the 1960s and 70s. Banis was a pioneering figure in gay genre fiction, among the first American writers to place openly gay protagonists at the centre of mass-market paperbacks, not as villains, victims, or cautionary figures, but as sympathetic leads in adventure, mystery, and comedy. Part of Maurice Girodias’ The Olympia Press Traveller’s Companion Series, TC-484. “Can a handsome young gay stud go straight and marry the boss’s daughter? Sure, if the amorous ghost of his late boyfriend doesn’t materialize naked in his car, at his parties, and in his bed.” This copy signed by Banis to the title page.
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The Gay Haunt
AU$200.00 Read MoreAdd to cartVictor Jay
New York: The Other Traveller, 1972.Gay pulp fiction by Victor J. Banis under his Victor Jay pseudonym, one of several he employed for his prolific output of gay paperback fiction in the 1960s and 70s. Banis was a pioneering figure in gay genre fiction, among the first American writers to place openly gay protagonists at the centre of mass-market paperbacks, not as villains, victims, or cautionary figures, but as sympathetic leads in adventure, mystery, and comedy. This copy signed by Banis to the title page.
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Occupied Spaces
AU$200.00 Read MoreAdd to cartBen Roberts; Naomi Colvin
London: Here Press, 2012.Photographic documentation of the private and communal spaces of the 2011-2012 Occupy London protest, with a short essay by Naomi Colvin. First edition, one of 250 copies (a second edition of 100 copies was printed in 2014).
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Opiologia ad mentem Acadamiae Naturae Curiosorum
AU$4,000.00 Read MoreAdd to cartGeorg Wolfgang Wedel
Jenae: Johannis Fritschii, 1674.First edition of this rare and early treatise on the pharmacological and therapeutic aspects of opium. The large title vignette one of the earliest illustrations of scoring and bleeding the poppy. Georg Wolfgang Wedel (1645-1721) was a German professor of surgery, botany, theoretical and practical medicine, and chemistry.
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L’Enfer de Joseph Prudhomme savoir Deux Gougnottes et La Grisette et L’Etudiant
AU$2,500.00 Read MoreAdd to cart[Henry Monnier]; [Jean Dulac]
Paris: Sans la Permission Roy Louis Philippe, No date.Clandestine edition, circa 1929, illustrating Henry Monnier’s Prudhomme. One of 20 deluxe copies on Imperial Japan paper (from a total edition of 320), with the erotic plates in a second state in black and white with remarques, and an additional rejected plate not included with the standard issue. This is the first edition illustrated by Jean Dulac; a later edition with an entirely new suite of illustrations by Dulac was issued a few years afterward. DUTEL 1481. Finely bound by Henri Alix, with the original wrappers bound in.
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Fantastic Worlds: North Africa’s Magazine of Cinema Fantasy and the Unknown
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartDavid Soren
Cambridge, Mass.: Fantastic Worlds Magazine, [1972].Issue one of the horror and Hammer Films fanzine published by American archaeologist David Soren (1946-). “So one day we went to Hammer – we just walked right in a announced that we were publishers of a fanzine (fan magazine) about horror films in the U.S. and we asked for the addresses and phones numbers of David’s favorite Hammer stars so we could interview them – and we got them!! So for the next couple of years, whenever we were in London, we sought out and interviewed stars… To keep us honest, David had to actually produce the fanzine where these interviews were published, and so he wrote and distributed Fantastic Worlds Magazine, Issues 1 and 2, a real collector’s item today!” (Noelle Soren) Indeed rare, with only 1 holding recorded in OCLC, at the University of Georgia.
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Black & Gay: The Survey of Interracial Homosexual Practices
AU$400.00 Read MoreAdd to cartVictor Dodson
North Hollywood: Barclay House, 1969.Non-fiction sexological pulp being a survey of interracial homosexual practices by partner team Victor J. Banis and Sam Dodson. Banis was a highly influential gay fiction author and has been called “the godfather of modern popular gay fiction”. This copy signed by Banis to the title page.
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The Crisis by Eugene Field
AU$500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartEugene Field; [Colin B. Berckelman]
Athens [ie. Sydney]: The Vaginal Press, 1938.The vulgarity of the sexual slang in this scurrilous, pseudonymously published piece of verse would have been regarded in 1938 Australia as being at the very extremes of obscenity. Written and “hand-printed for subscribers only” by bibliophile Colin Berckelman in an (unsurprisingly) small edition of 25 copies, the publication can now be considered a genuine rarity: 11 of the 25 copies have found their way into public collections. Berckelman’s use of the non-de-plume Eugene Field is almost certainly an allusion to the late nineteenth century American writer of the same name who, aside from producing poetry for young readers, wrote The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac (1896). Berckelman, for reasons that were either genuine or perverse, evidently felt some affinity with Field. “On top, the pumping method; or lying on the side, Or spread upon her billowing bum, a-la the blushing bride, Or stand up, or sitting down, or resting on all four, Whereby the visitor could take his choice of either door, Or dressed, or naked,… every way her genius could invent To catch the silvery substance that tickleth as ’tis spent.”
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Le Marseille Curieux
AU$500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartPierre d’Agranon
Paris: L. d’Autrec, No date.The Curious Marseilles. Guide-Souvenir des Touristes et des Etrangers dans l’ancien Quartier Noble de Marseille Devenu Le Celebre Quartier Reserve. 1922 illustrated guide for sex tourists to the brothels of Marseille in the south of France. Copious illustrated with photographs of working women, a folding map of the area, and numerous advertisements.
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Vice Versa or a Lesson to Fathers
AU$600.00 Read MoreAdd to cartF. Anstey [Thomas Anstey Guthrie]
London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1882.First edition, first printing of the comic novel by Thomas Anstey Guthrie set in Victorian London in which a stern father and mischevious son body-swap via a magic stone from India.
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Mandatory Masquerade
Read MoreTrina Beaumont
Sydney [Ulladulla]: The Seahorse Club of Australia, 1981.Illustrated novella published by Seahorse, Australia’s first transgender support organisation. Authored by Trina Beaumont (formerly Trina Taylor), long-time editor of the club’s newsletter, Feminique, and a media advocate for the organisation during the 1970s. At the time, Seahorse primarily served heterosexual men who enjoyed cross-dressing, presenting members as ordinary men who occasionally adopted female attire. The novella includes illustrations by Di Ward and represents a rare example of early Australian transgender literature and community-produced publishing. A single copy recorded in OCLC, at the State Library of New South Wales.
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Mushrooms, Russia and History
AU$14,000.00 Read MoreAdd to cartValentina Pavolvna Wasson; R. Gordon Wasson
New York: Pantheon Books, 1957.The founding work of ethnomycology. One of 512 numbered copies. The Wassons’ central thesis divided cultures into “mycophilic” and “mycophobic” (those that embraced mushrooms and those that feared them), with Russia and the Anglo-Saxon world as the defining poles. Their investigations led to the study of psychoactive mushroom use in Mesoamerican religious ceremony, culminating in R. Gordon Wasson’s participation in a Mazatec velada with the curandera Maria Sabina in 1955. The resulting work bridges folklore, linguistics, botany, and anthropology, and laid the groundwork for the modern study of psychoactive fungi and later, entheogens. Produced at the Stamperia Valdonega in Verona under the direction of Giovanni Mardersteig, the edition is equally significant as a feat of book production, two large quarto volumes with 82 plates including 32 in colour, printed in a limited edition at the authors’ expense.
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Public Fitting
AU$2,500.00 Read MoreAdd to cartTim Johnson
Sydney: Tim Johnson, 1972.A 1972 artist’s book by Sydney conceptual artist (now painter) Tim Johnson (1947-), containing 40 full page black and white street photographs which show the wind lifting the skirts of women on the streets of Sydney. Produced during his time as co-founder of one of Sydney’s first artist-run spaces, Inhibodress, alongside Mike Parr and Peter Kennedy, the work forms a key part of Johnson’s early-1970s investigations into public space, social conditioning, and eroticism. While the images might initially appear voyeuristic (see upskirt), they are best understood through the lens of his contemporaneous performances, Disclosure and Fittings. Those live works staged situations to expose and analyze unconscious “sexual mores” and “sex-role conditioning”, manipulating participants’ clothing in a gallery, provoking direct responses. Public Fitting explores similar themes through the “found performance” of the street, framing the wind as an unwitting collaborator and the women’s reactions as unscripted data on social behaviour. Published alongside a Super 8 film of the same name (featuring different images as compared with the film in the collection of the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane), the film’s duration underscores the work’s non-erotic, analytical dimension. In contrast, the book’s static images are more readily misread as purely voyeuristic. This copy bears a later manuscript title on the spine, “Public Fitting – XXX”, a direct annotation of the work’s perceived erotic content, demonstrating the very social-sexual condition the artist sought to examine. Beyond this conceptual framework, the work also serves a vidid record of women’s fashion in early-1970s Sydney, an era dominated by the miniskirt. The edition size is unstated, though several sources, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, state that 200 copies were produced. This copy with an additional folded sheet containing 5 further small images of a woman’s underwear (perhaps from a different source), the artist’s stamp with his 54 Albermarle St address, and the contemporary signature Micheal [Mansell?] dated 17th/4/72.
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Julie, ou J’ai Sauve ma Rose. Par Madame de C***.
Read More[Felicite de Choiseul-Meuse?]; [Madame Guyot?]
A Hambourg, et se Trouve a Paris: Chez les Marchands de Nouveautes, 1807.Possibly the first sapphic novel written by a woman, over a century before Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness. The vivid depiction of lesbian love lends to the warning on the title page, “La mere en defendra la lecture a sa fille” [The mother will forbid her daughter to read it], and led to the novel’s censure in 1825 and on the ruling of obscenity and its order of destruction in 1827. First published in 1807, this is a well survived example of the second edition, differing from the first with the French spelling modernized, published in 1820 or 1821 but with the same 1807 imprint of the first edition. Sometimes attributed to Felicite de Choiseul-Meuse, and also to Madame Guyot, both have been refuted. PERCEAU 6-2, PIA pp. 662-3, GAY Vol. IV pp. 196.