Steven Marcus
PISANUS FRAXI, PORNOGRAPHER ROYAL
On March 30, 1877, two hundred and fifty copies of a
privately printed volume left the hands of an unidentified London
printer. The manuscript of this work had been with him for almost
two years, and its passage into print had been beset with unusual dif–
ficulties. The printing establishment was small, its "readers," such as
they were, incompetent to correct the press of a complex and technical
text, which was, moreover, written in several languages; and the
compositor who set up the volume was himself familiar with only one
language.
As
a consequence, the editorial reading of the work
throughout its various stages of preparation devolved upon the
author, and the extent of his thoroughness and care may be seen in
the seven full pages of errata which he caused to be included at the
end of the printed volume.
The title of the work is
Index Librorum Prohibitorum: being
Notes Bio-Biblio-Icono-graphical and Critical, on Curious and Un–
common Books.
The volume is in large quarto, and is printed on
heavy, toned paper (it weighs almost four pounds). It has an en–
graved frontispiece and reproduces by photo-lithography occasional
facsimile pages from works which it discusses in its text.
It
generously
mixes inks and types of print: the title of each book noticed
in
the
text is printed in red, the essential part of that title in Black Letter,
and the names of authors, artists, and publishers in Small Capitals;
in the index, authors' names are in Small Capitals, tides are in Old
English, and subjects are printed in Antique; and throughout the
volume, capitals, italics, and other faces, along with a variety of
spacings and settings are freely used. The work consists of an Intro–
duction of seventy-six pages, a body of text four hundred and thirty–
six pages long, a thirty-eight page list of "Authorities Consulted,"
and an Index of fifty-eight pages- all of this, including other minor
