KRAUSS, Friedrich Salomon (1859-1938), editor

 Complete set of this monumental collection of erotical folklore, published in a limited and numbered edition for scholars only and prosecuted throughout their entire appearance. Each volume has a Warning! on verso of title-leaf: ”Privatdruck. Nur für Gelehrte, nicht für den Buchhandel bestimmt ... Wer die Anthropophyteia verleiht oder in einer Buchhandlung öffentlich feilhält, der setzt in Deutschland der Gefahr gerichtlicher Verfolgungen aus.” The work contains thousands of folktales and innumerable documents of related sort. Freud, whose Dreams and Folklore is based on tales from this collection, called it ”einem unersetzlichen Quellenwerk für alles, was das Geschlechtleben der Völker betrifft”. Edited by Friedrich Krauss, the distinguished South Slavonic ethnologist in collaboration with prominent scholars as Franz Boas, Iwan Bloch, Hermann Obst, and many others, the work embodies the result of a patient investigation of an important but peculiarly difficult and ungrateful subject along the borderline between primitive anthropology and modern civilization. Most of the material is given in the form of short narrative descriptions in the various provincial dialects and with German translation, notes and glossaries of special terms not known to dictionaries. The work is of great philologhical value, relating proverbs, songs, stories, riddles, etc, particularly as found in Austria, the South German provinces, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Hungary, Dalmatia. In later volumes also non-European civilizations are dealt with, in Africa, Asia, Peru, Mexico and the South Pacific. Special topics treated are supernatural conception, personal and place names, sexual teaching, marriage customs, sexual hospitality, erotic tatooing, perversions, etc. There are chapters on the sense of smell in sexual life, and narratives of some exceptional sexual desires not often investigated in the literature. It is important, as James Mooney pointed out in his review; ” ... that the book does not deal with the aberrant impulse of a decadent aristocracy, a degenerate city slum community ... It deals with everyday things of a whole population made up almost entirely of farmers and herdsmen remote from large cities and their temptations.” At the end of each volume are reviews of other publications in the field. Separate supplement volumes treating special themes were published as ”Beiwerke zum Studium der Anthropophyteia”.

Collation: Over 5100 pages and about 100 plates.

Binding: Ten volumes in publisher’s red cloth