1774 Scarce French Book - Le BALAI, a Licentious Tale by DU LAURENS.
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Author: Henri Joseph Du Laurens.
Title: Le Balai; Poëme Héroï-comique en XVIII. Chants.
Publisher: A Constantinople [Amsterdam?] : De l'Imprimerie du Mouphti, 1774.
Language: Text in French.
Size: 8 " X 5 ".
Pages: xx-192 pages.
Binding: Very good full calf leather binding (hinges worn and scuffed but still tight and secure, overall worn and scuffed - as shown) under a protective removable mylar cover.
Content: Very good content (bright, tight and clean, some foxing or staining - as shown, chip to upper margin of page 31 without affecting the text - as shown).
The book: Scarce 18th-century French very licentious tale composed in 20 days, published for the first time in 1761. It is about an interpretation of the use of what of the broom one calls the handle... Some 6000 well-written and very spiritual verses, which take up the themes dear to the erotic novels of this period, in particular, the frustrated nuns in their convent and the bawdy monks. The Broom, the object of this epic, is The grass that grows in the hand of a girl, the living object that one wishes at the gate. Blacklisted by police measure in 1825. (Barbier I, 379 - Quérard II, p. 663 - Gay I, 346 - Dict. Of Erotic Works p. 57 - Bibl. Clérico-galante, 69).
The author: Henri Joseph Du Laurens (sometimes Laurens or Dulaurens, original name Henri Joseph Laurent, 1719–1793 or 1797) was a French unfrocked trinitarian monk, satirical poet, and novelist, born at Douai, the son of the regimental surgeon Jean Joseph Laurent and his wife Marie Josephe Menon. He was author of such libertine works as Le compère Matthieu, Imirce, ou la fille de la nature and L'Arrétin moderne. He may also have written Candide, Part II. He died at Mariembourg in the French First Republic, now in Belgium.