My Secret Life [Books I-XI]

New York: Grove Press, 1966. First Thus. First Grove Press printing. Two large, heavy octavo volumes. Cloth hardcovers in dustjackets and publisher's slipcase; lxviv,[1]-1291; 1292-2259pp. Some waviness to cloth on spines, else minimal signs of use, with texts clean, tight and unmarked in the original dustwrappers, unclipped (priced $30 on front flaps), Near Fine. In the original publisher's slipcase, lightly worn, with the publisher's pictorial label lightly rubbed but unfaded.

The first commercial printing of this anonymously written, endlessly detailed sexual "memoir," written over a period of forty years and previously available only in limited, private printings. The book's authorship has long been a matter of debate; it is most commonly attributed to the Victorian bibliophile and collector of erotica, Henry Spencer Ashbee. A classic -- perhaps the classic -- of Victorian erotica, these two massive volumes were published by Grove at the exhorbitant price of $30 in 1966, a year when thirty dollars could have bought a month's worth of groceries. Sales could not have been enormous, and nice copies of My Secret Life have always been hard to find; this a well-preserved, almost new-appearing set.