Racist Erotica: Human Gorillas a Study of Rape

Roscaud, Count. Richard Burton (foreword.). Human Gorillas. A Study of Rape with Violence. Paris: Charles Carrington, 1901. Octavo. xvi, 235pp. Original wrappers bound in, 3/4 blue morocco lettered in gilt. Illustrated. Very good.

First edition. Limited to 500 copies. This rather abhorrent volume of erotica in the guise of sociological/medical treatise exemplifies attitudes of racism and sexism in the educated class of Western Europe and England, as shown in this excerpt from a book on "forbidden books" published the following year: "I simply wish to state that the union of white and coloured folk is a great and unnatural mistake, and when a black man is lynched in America for violating a white woman, the punishment, horrible as it is, is not merely carried out for the sake of the crime itself, but because of the consequences: the birth of a hybrid, who is always on the verge of savagery, if he does not revert to barbarism. This is the true cause of the hatred between whites and blacks in the United States and elsewhere- but which is kept back from the chaste ears of English readers.  But in many cases, it is a gruesome fact that the daughters of Eve true to the insticts of their race, handed down from the slightly clad lady who dallied with the serpent, are often the tempters of the none too unwilling black. In "Human Gorillas, a study of Rape with violence"... this subject is fully considered, among a mass of extraordinary information relative to the subject, with some hitherto unpublished data relating to the lynching of negroes in the land of the Stars and Stripes." -FORBIDDEN BOOKS BY AN OLD BIBLIOPHILE Paris, 1902. Charles Carrington (1857–1921) was a leading British publisher of erotica in late-19th and early 20th century Europe. Born Paul Harry Ferdinando in Bethnal Green, England on 11 November 1867, he moved in 1895 from London to Paris where he published and sold books in the rue Faubourg Montmartre and rue de Chateaudun; for a short period he moved his activities to Brussels. Carrington’s semi-obscene novels with settings in Africa include the following: Hector France, The Chastisement of Mansour, trans. Alfred Allinson (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1898); Hector France, Musk, Hashish, and Blood (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1900); John Cameron Grant, The Ethiopian: A Narrative of the Society of Human Leopards (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1900); Human Gorillas: A Study of Rape with Violence (Paris: C. Carrington, 1901); Jean de Villiot, Woman and Her Master(Paris: n.p. [Charles Carrington], 1904); and A Spahi’s Love Story (Paris: Charles Carrington, 1907). (#kfk576)