Histoire de l'oeil was translated from the French as A tale of satisfied desire by “Audiart,” a pseudonym for Austryn Wainhouse (a.k.a. Pieralessandro Casavini), an American Harvard graduate employed by the Olympia Press in Paris who received the National Book Award in 1972 for his translation of Jacques Monod's Chance and Necessity. Adapted from Bataille's revised text, first printed in 1944 — the second version, and standard French edition — this translation appeared about the same time as the third French edition. Bataille worked on other projects with both Wainhouse and Maurice Girodias, founder of the Olympia Press, and probably knew of this translation. The Olympia Press specialized in providing the types of books that would be automatically banned in Britain and the United States. The first to publish Nabokov's Lolita and Donleavy's Ginger Man, Olympia also printed numerous exuberantly pornographic works penned pseudonymously by members of the Paris expatriate community, as well as avant-garde and controversial works by prominent Beat writers including William S. Burroughs and Gregory Corso.

Scarce: WorldCat locates just three copies in the U.S.

•  D. Cullen, ed., “Bataille's Eye & ICI Field Notes 4,” The Institute of Cultural Inquiry (1997), p. 25. On this work as censored, see: L. Sigel, International exposure: perspectives on modern European pornography, 1800–2000, pp. 129–30.   Publisher's mustard-colored wrappers printed in black, with white stars and bars; extremities rubbed, wrappers a little scuffed, inside like new.  (30200)

Uncommon: WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956 locate only six U.S. institutional holdings.

•  Martin & Walter 396.   Never bound, sewn as issued, with edges untrimmed. Title-page with affixed paper shelving label in lower inner corner and pencilled monogram in upper outer portion. One leaf with closed split running through several lines, without loss of text.  (30813)

•  Martin & Walter 3914.   Removed from a nonce volume, title-page with paper shelving label in lower inner corner, early inked date addition within title and annotation in upper portion, and pencilled monogram in upper outer corner. Light foxing and the occasional other spot.  (30937)

•  Howes H114 (for the first and several subsequent editions); Shoemaker 24513; Sabin 23987.   Contemporary acid-stained sheep, flat spine darkened and slightly pulled at top with vertically cracked leather reflecting a gutter opening at pp. 234–35; rubbing and abrasions, but volume firm. Title-page and last leaves with offsetting from a previous binding, one short marginal tear a little into text without loss, one leaf with paper flaw in upper margin taking the two page numerals; some foxing and light age-toning, with a small number of pencilled lines, ticks, etc. to margins indicating points of interest. A good++ copy.  (40899)

This edition comes withtwo engraved title-pages, one for each volume: the first showing an officer whose identity is covered by a curtain by G. Murray after H. Corbould, and the second showing a landscape with a pike topped with a Phrygian cap, sword, and shield alongside the Bill of Rights and Magna Carta by J. Pye after “R.W.”

As noted above, Sharpe was not the only printer to think of producing a new Junius in 1820 — Bumpus, Rivington, Davison, and Hancock also produced editions.

Binding:  Red straight-grain morocco, each spine gilt extra, covers framed in gilt floral rolls, all edges gilt.

•  Bound as above, three boards reattached using the long-fiber method; overall lightly rubbed and stained, spines a bit sunned with leather chipping at one tip, light pencilling on endpapers. Title-page engravings lightly foxed, two leaves with small marginal stain and a number with creasing across corners, light age-toning. A neat, attractive little set of this political classic.  (37228)

Printed on two sheets precisely glued together to form a seamless whole, in double-column format and with the woodcut seal of the Inquisition in the lower right corner of the lower edge.

Garritz located only the copy in the Biblioteca Nacional and WorldCat locates only seven U.S. institutions holding copies.

•  Garritz, Impresos novohispanos, 1137. Not in Palau; Medina, Mexico; Ziga & Espinosa, Adiciones a la imprenta en Mexico; González de Cossío, 510, or González de Cossío, Cien.   Old folds; a few small wormholes touching or costing a very few letters and one larger hole costing five letters, but not impeding reading sense. Slight discoloration along the area where the two sheets are pasted together and at points on vertical fold.  (34599)

•  Sutro 756 ("19p." being a typographical error for collation given here); not in Steele, Independent Mexico: A Collection of Mexican Pamphlets in the Bodleian Library. Folded and never sewn or bound; as issued.  (4992)

education

•  NSTC 2P27024. On Prinsep, see: DNB. Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly age-toned. Traces of soiling and small inked numeral on title-page. A few instances of pencilled sidelining.  (11186)