A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Mystic Theology of the Ancients (a New Edition), to which is added An Essay on the Worship of the Generative Powers During the Middle Ages of Western Europe (Large Paper Edition)

London: Privately Published, 1894. Facsimile Edition. Hardcover. Large quarto (12.5 x 9.5 inches). 1894 facsimile of the 1865 edition. Bound in early 20th century half calf over boards. Gilt rules along leather. Spine with 5 raised bands with titles and decorations in compartments. This edition limited to 500 numbered copies, printed from type, twenty-five of which are large paper copies. This volume is one of the large paper copies though it is not numbered. Marbled endpapers. 254 pages plus 40 pages of black and white erotic plates at end of volume. Printed on thick paper. Some rubbing to boards and along edges of leather, slight indentation to lower front right edge. A very good or better copy of this large paper edition. This work, which was Knight’s first book (first published in 1786) sought to recover the importance of ancient phallic cults. Knight's apparent preference for ancient sacred eroticism over Judeo-Christian puritanism led to many attacks on him as an infidel and as a scholarly apologist for libertinism. This ensured the persistent distrust of the religious establishment. The central claim of The Worship of Priapus was that an international religious impulse to worship 'the generative principle' was articulated through genital imagery, and that this imagery has persisted into the modern age. In some ways the book was the first of many later attempts to argue that pagan ideas had persisted within Christian culture, a view that would eventually crystallize into the neo-pagan movement over a century later. The second work included in this volume (Worship of the Generative Powers) is along the same lines but specific to the middle ages in western Europe. This was written by Thomas Wright.