Paris: Oceanic Press, 1958-60

12mos, uniform grey stiff paper wrappers lettered in read and black to front panel and spine, importation warning printed in black to rear panel. Stamped or pencilled price ('1200') to rear wrappers of five titles. Top edges dusty, some mottling to the front free endpaperr of vol. 10, otherwise a very fine, unread set.

First editions. A complete run of Oceanic Press titles. THE EROTICA HISTORIAN AND BIBLIOGRAPHER GERSHON LEGMAN'S SET, WITH NUMBERS ADDED TO THE SPINES OF UNNUMBERED TITLES IN HIS HAND. ADDITIONAL PENCILLED NOTES BY LEGMAN TO THREE VOLUMES, SPECULATING ON PUBLISHING HISTORY AND AUTHORS' IDENTITIES.

In the late 1950s the Oceanic Press was one of a number of Paris-based fly-by-night imprints looking to emulate the success of Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press, publisher of the Traveller's Companion series and the era's pre-eminent purveyor of literary erotica. Pierre Delarue's Oceanic Press series comprised twelve titles with printed numbers to the spines, and a further nine unnumbered, the books' size and format shamelessly lifted from the Olympia Press. The Oceanic authors worked behind pseudonyms, and most are still unidentified.

However, A Diary of the 'Senses', No. 6 in the series, is exceptional in a more ways than one. Published here under the name 'Helen Tucker', it is known to be the work of the French-Roumanian artist Isidore Isou [1925-2007], and was first published in French by Eric Lorsfield as La Confidence Sensuelle, probably in 1955 (the book is undated). This is the first edition in English of a very early trans title, written at the time of Christine Jorgensen's sex reassignment surgery in the early 1950s. The story of two lovers who, meeting in later life, discover that they've both undergone reassignment, A Diary of the 'Senses' is not only an early entry in the trans canon but is also almost certainly the first pornographic take on the subject.

In the 1980s Gershon Legman provided the Olympia Press bibliographer Patrick Kearney with a rough checklist of Olympia's Paris competitors,a list which provided the foundations of a more comprehensive bibliography Kearney would issue many years later. These books from Legman's library are in fine or near fine condition, and some carry inked series numbers in Legman's hand to their spines.

A rare set.