Merde à la Belle Époque is now available from Black Scat Books! Doug Skinner has chosen, translated, and annotated a choice selection of scatological texts from Paris’s Bohemian heyday. The texts range from 1883 to 1902, and include poems, stories, a play, a rebus and a letter. You’ll find Alphonse Allais, George Auriol, Georges Courteline, Edmond Haraucourt, Vincent Hyspa, Maurice Mac-Nab, and Erik Satie, all devoting their considerable talents to toilet humor. The book is 48 pages, elegantly printed in black and brown, designed by Norman Conquest, and limited to 310 copies.

Praise for Merde à la Belle Époque:
“BLACK SCAT BOOKS has launched from the pits of lit this shameful little anthology, wonderfully translated and prefaced with futile brilliance by Doug Skinner. I was immediately disgusted and attracted by these turn-of-the-century French luminaries indulging in dirty little boy lyrics and lunatic stories, many of them in the scatological society that hung out at Le Chat Noir…”
—Alain Arias-Misson

“Incroyable!… Alfred (a fart man from way back) Jarry would surely relish this collection–one which combines force-feeding with delicate odoriferous leakage—something for every taste!”
—Nile Southern

“These dirty little secrets are canonical secretions of literary genius. Fin de siècle Parisian scatology at its best.”
—D. Harlan Wilson

(Posted by Doug Skinner)