In the days before erotic story archives on the internet, the business of getting your hands on some erotic fiction was both difficult and costly. This small catalogue is an amazing survival, printed on the flimsiest of paper which is now very friable at the edges but nonetheless gives details of an interesting selection of material. It's also true of course that dealing in this kind of thing could have landed you in a lot of legal bother so it is not surprising that no name is attached to the list. I haven't been through and exhaustively dated each item but, given that the list claims both "new and secondhand" volumes, looking at the most recent items on it we might assume a date of about 1890. What is particularly nice about this list is that it sits in a bit of a gap. The exhaustive and compellingly detailed bibliographical work of C. R. Ashbee (writing as Pisanus Fraxi) often doesn't detail more recent editions of 18th century works and so it is nice to have lists like this from, albeit only just after, Ashbee leaves off. I wonder if this is the only copy of this bookseller's list left?
