'Olde English' Sex Advice on Sale for $65,000

A pre-Enlightenment sex manual is going for $65,000 at an antiquarian book fair in California.

One of three surviving first editions of Aristoteles Master-Piece, a sex manual first published in 1684, has gone on sale at an antiquarian book fair in California with a price tag of $65,000, the Guardian reports.

"Books of this type were very heavily used, and most copies were read out of existence; thus the rarity of the first edition, and the incomplete aspects of nearly all surviving copies," the book's seller Jeremy Norman told the paper.

"Another extraordinary aspect of this work was that it continued to be reprinted to meet popular demand for information on sex and reproduction over the centuries, even as late as the early 20th century."

The book gives such advice on sex and reproduction as "the way of getting a boy or a girl," and "a word of advice to both Sexes in the Act of Copulation." The manual's depictions of sex and reproduction, though not intended to be pornographic, led it to be read and distributed in secret, and it was even banned in Britain for over 200 years, until 1961.

The book also contains such classic advice to men as "he must entertain her with all kinds of dalliance, wanton behaviour, and allurements to Venery," but if the lady doth reject his advances then "he must cherish, embrace, and tickle her… intermixing more wanton Kisses with wanton Words and Speeches, handling her Secret Parts and Dugs, that she may take fire and be inflamed to Venery,” the Guardian reports, citing a passage quoted in The Routledge History of Sex and the Body.

The book, which has been mentioned in literary works such as James Joyce's Uylsses and Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, previously fetched 550 British pounds ($760 US) when an edition from around 1766 was sold in January 2013 at an auction house in Edinburgh.