(New York: Privately Printed by the Panurge Press, n.d. [ca. 1930]).

An unusual and very scarce piece dealing with homosexuality and intercourse, including a final critical chapter by John Addington Symonds. The essay originally appeared in the Kama Shastra Society Edition of the “Arabian Nights” as a chapter from the “Terminal Essay” called “Pederasty.” The preface states, “The publication of this Kama Shastra edition created a furor which shook the foundations of literary England, then at the crest of Victorian prudery. “The Sotadic Zone” was acidly attacked in press and pulpit by old women in crinolines and blue-nosed censors in petticoats.” It was omitted from Lady Burton's edition and from subsequent popular editions due to this.
In 1901 fifty copies of this essay were privately published in London with the title “Terminal Essay.” Like the Panurge Press “Sotadic Zone,” it was actually a printing of Chapter D “Pederasty” from the Arabian Nights.” Casada mentions yet another edition with a slightly different title, published in New York by the Falstaff Press, undated, and says of the essay: "It almost certainly was published after Burton's death.”
The main premise of the essay is that there is a geographical zone within which climatic conditions support homosexual behavior. Burton names this area “The Sotadic Zone” after the homosexual Greek poet Sotades, 276 B.C. The area passes through the Mediterranean countries, and includes Southern France, Mesopotamia, Afghanistan, Sind, Punjab, Kashmir, China, Japan, Turkestan, The South Sea Islands, and all of the new world.
“Within the Sotadic Zone,” Burton writes, “the Vice is popular and endemic, held at the worst to be a mere peccadillo, whilst the races to the North and South of the limits here defined practice it only sporadically amid the opprobrium of their fellows who, as a rule, are physically incapable of performing the operation and look upon it with the liveliest disgust.”
John Addington Symonds writes a brief critique of Burton’s theory at the end of the volume.The NUC lists but a single copy of [the Falstaff edition at the University of Wisconsin. This may not be the first edition of the work. It was privately printed by the Panurge Press of New York in 1930(?) in a limited edition of 2,010 copies, with later reprints of this version in 1973...and in 1977." Item #12152

First separate edition published by Panurge Press. One of 2010 numbered copies (of which 10 were reserved for the editors). 8vo, purple patterned cloth gilt lettered on the spine, and gilt lettered and decorated on the upper cover, t.e.g. 107 pp. A very fine copy with just a hint of mellowing to the spine panel.