Antoine RIBEAUCOURT (circa 1835-1905 ?) translator and print - Lot 301

Antoine RIBEAUCOURT (circa 1835-1905 ?) translator and printer. Autograph manuscript signed "A.R.", Note du Traducteur, [1883?]; 2 pages in-4 in pencil. Preliminary text for his extremely rare translation of Pietro Aretino's Ragionamenti, printed by him on a hand press in only 15 copies. A rare manuscript by this forgotten maverick of French underground erotica. Guillaume Apollinaire praised him, and Pierre Louÿs owned manuscripts by Ribeaucourt. [See David Chambers, "Antoine Ribeaucourt: translator, printer", Bulletin du bibliophile, 2008, no. 1, pp. 114-128]. "Are 19th-century men more virtuous than 16th-century men when Arétin wrote his Ragionamenti? We may well doubt it, when we remember that human nature has not changed, and that the foundations on which morality was founded have remained the same. The Catholicism that shaped the mores of that era still exerts its fatal influence on us"... Etc.