Paris et Nantes: chez Defer Demaisonneuve (Paris) et chez Louis (Nantes), 1790

8vo, pp. 87. Pencilled bookseller's markings to front and rear endpapers. Contemporary marbled boards, gilt lettering to leather spine. Gilt lettering to spine very faint, corners bumped, wear with slight loss to spine ends, but a very well preserved copy.

GERSHON LEGMAN'S COPY, WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE DATED 1954 TO FRONT FREE ENDPAPER, AND 'FOLKLORE' IN HIS HAND TO FRONT PASTEDOWN. Translation by Jean-Charles Crozet.

First published in Italian (but in Paris) in 1788 under the title Il Fodero, osia il Jus sulle spose degli antichi signori, this satire on the myth of droit de seigneur (better known in France as droit de jambage, oddly enough) was re-published two years later in this French edition. What began life as a gentle satire on the much-discussed but largely unknown feudal tradition became, in this fresh translation published in the heat of revolutionary France, a trenchant attack on the country's ousted aristocracy. It was hugely popular as a result, and many editions followed.

Gershon Legman [1917-1999] was the pre-eminent erotic biblio-historian of the twentieth century; more pertinently here, he was also a distinguished folklore historian.

Very scarce, and with a fine provenance.