The Mystified Magistrate and Other Tales

First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. xxi, 211. Textured red paper boards, lettered in red foil to black paper-bound spine. Red endpapers. Deckled fore-edge. Translated, with an Introduction by Richard Seaver. Jacket design by Filomena Tuosto, priced at $23.95 to front flap.

Novella plus 12 stories. The title story is a delightful skewering of the Provencal judge who sentenced Sade to death in absentia in 1772. Selections taken from the author's Contes et Fabliaux du XVIII siecle, par troubadour provençal.

"Sade's lighter fiction included at least three minor masterpieces – 'The Mystified Magistrate,' 'Augustine de Villeblanche,' and 'Emilie de Tourville.' The comic tone that pervades them seems all the more remarkable when one remembers that they were written within the dark confines of the Bastille." –Gilbert Lely, author of Sade: A Biography.