Marquis de Sade; Eugene Duhren [Iwan Bloch]
Paris: Club des Bibliophiles, 1904.

The first printed edition and editio princeps of the text, based on the notorious manuscript written by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade in the Bastille in 1785. The manuscript, composed in minute script on a continuous paper roll, was long presumed lost following the storming of the Bastille, before resurfacing in the late nineteenth century and coming into the hands of the Berlin physician and pioneering sexologist Iwan Bloch. Bloch prepared the first edition, editing and annotating the text under the pseudonym Eugene Duhren, and issued it via the Berlin bookseller Max Harrwitz, using a fictive Paris imprint to mitigate censorship concerns. In his introduction, Bloch framed the work as a document of scientific and anthropological interest, intended for specialists in sexual pathology, jurisprudence, and cultural history. The text, as here presented, is incomplete and editorially imperfect, deficiencies later addressed in Maurice Heine’s critical edition of 1931-35, prepared from direct examination of the autograph manuscript, yet this remains the foundational printed appearance.

One of 200 numbered copies, this being one of 160 printed on laid paper. Together with the rare original subscription prospectus by Max Harrwitz, three leaves (29cm x 11.cm), folded vertically and complete with original cord.

Marquis de Sade; Maurice Heine; Andre Collot
Paris: S. & C., aux Depens des Bibliophiles Souscripteurs, 1931-36.

The first critical edition of the text, and the first established directly from the autograph manuscript written by Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade in the Bastille in 1785. The manuscript, composed in minute script on a continuous paper roll, was long presumed lost following the storming of the Bastille, before resurfacing in the late nineteenth century and coming into the hands of the Berlin physician and pioneering sexologist Iwan Bloch, whose foundational but flawed 1904 edition first brought the text into print. Following Bloch’s death, the manuscript entered French ownership (often associated with the patronage circle of Charles de Noailles and Marie-Laure de Noailles, a descendant of Sade), enabling the Sade specialist Maurice Heine to prepare the present edition under their support. Working directly from the autograph roll, Heine produced a transcription of far greater fidelity than Bloch’s, accompanied by a substantial critical apparatus keyed to the original manuscript and including a photographic facsimile as frontispiece. Heine’s engagement with Sade was both scholarly and personal: he first encountered the work through Bloch’s edition in 1912, later recalling (most notably in the 1933 ‘Minotaure enquete’ organised by Andre Breton and Paul Eluard) that discovery as decisive. Pascal Pia would subsequently credit Heine with establishing the modern text of Sade. Issued in a limited edition of 396 numbered copies, this example is one of 300 on velin de Rives. It is here bound with the complete suite of sixteen lithographs by Andre Collot, separately issued in a limited edition (c. 1936) and intended for addition to subscribers’ sets and unsold copies.