Edda, Stockholm, 2011. Hardcover with dust-jacket. Limited Edition of 418 hand-numbered copies. This copy no. 296.  Edited, with an introduction, by William Breeze. Four color printing. Illustrated by Fredrik Söderberg. Near fine copy.

Variations of sodomy, pederasty, bestiality, and necrophilia are interwoven with gleeful blasphemy in this seminal collection of poetry by Aleister Crowley. Inspired by Krafft-Ebing’s study of sexual perversity, Psychopathia Sexualis, it purports to be “the literary remains of George Archibald Bishop, a neuropath of the Second Empire.” Crowley’s infamous first book, White Stains was clandestinely printed in 1898 by Leonard Smithers. Of the one hundred numbered copies that were originally printed, only a handful were spared destruction by Her Majesty’s Customs; an outcome which speaks against Crowley’s decision to invoke the blessing of the Virgin Mary in his prefatory sonnet.

Crowley would go on to establish himself as a leading figure in the Western occult tradition. A drug addict, bisexual, and proponent of sex magick, Crowley’s flamboyantly impious lifestyle would lead the tabloid press to crown him “The Wickedest Man in the World.”