Friday, January 16, 2009

Phoebe Kisshagen Redux

Approximately one year ago I was writing about a book that had Jeeves and lord Wimsey have a fucking contest in an obscure paperback published as by Phoebe Kisshagen. I've been receiving comments on it from someone who calls himself "NSH". He's clearly an expert in old pornography, as he can locate the Kisshagen book in its earliest incarnations.

It seems, then, that the Finnish translation of the book (and probably the Swedish or Danish translation before it) has been altered so as to include the reference to Jeeves and Wimsey, two 20th century fictional heroes. The original book must've had some known characters of its own time having the said contest.

Here's the longest of NSH's responses. You can see the others ones in the original post:

Re: The famous Phoebe.

From Patrick J. Kearney’s A HISTORY OF EROTIC LITERATURE (London, Macmillan, 1982):

Talking about Edward Sellon and his works, Kearney writes:

‘...and ‘Phoebe Kissagen; or, the Remarkable Adventures, Schemes, Wiles, and Devilries of Une Maquerelle; being a sequel to the ‘New Epicurean’ (London, ‘1743' (1866); ....
Page 113.

I found no trace of the above in a French edition in Gay’s ‘Bibliographie des ouvrages... Nor in Rose’s Register of Erotic Books.

As far as English editions are concerned, see Rose, 3590:

‘Phoebe Kissagen; or, the Remarkable Adventures, Schemes, Wiles, and Devilries of Une Maquerelle; being a sequel to the ‘New Epicurean’ London 1743 (reprinted 1875) pp. 96, 8vo. Printed by Joseph Longtool, In and Out Lane, London.’

and

Gay, III 732, gives the title ‘Phoebe Kess’ with the same description as above but changing the size from an 8vo to a 16mo.
Note: Gay took a lot of his informatio from catalogues and often made mistakes in rewriting it.

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