For sale: last surviving copy of 'quintessential' English pornography

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The Independent
By John Vincent
26 November 2004


The world's first known piece of printed pornography in English literature makes Lady Chatterley's Lover read like a vicar's sermon. Now the only surviving copy of perhaps the filthiest play written is likely to change hands for a small fortune.

Sodom, described by the auctioneer Sotheby's as the "quintessence of debauchery", was penned in the mid-1670s and attributed to John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester, the brilliant and outrageous Restoration court wit.

One of the most licentious figures of a licentious age, many of his plays were too indecent to be published. That Sodom, or The Gentleman Instructed. A Comedy, its full title, was produced at all is astonishing. Outrageously obscene in its sexual references, language and content, the printer hid his tracks by claiming it was printed in The Hague, giving the daft date of 1000000.

By the 19th century, only two copies survived. Then one was destroyed in the 1830s by the executors of the great book collector, Richard Heber, horrified at finding it in his library. That left just the slim volume which is expected to fetch up to £35,000 when it surfaces from a private European collection at a Sotheby's English literature sale in London on 16 December.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=586818

[Aiptasia]

1. I'd rather buy that than a jesus fish stick...