This set of ‘diablerie’ is typical of many produced between 1800 and the 1890s, the best known of which is Achille Devéria’s 1835 Diabolico foutro-manie, which you can see here. What is interesting is this portfolio’s late date, around 1890, demonstrates that the diablerie model had real staying power as stock erotica through the century, and was regularly recycled and re-plated by print-sellers for decades. There is also the fact that while the plates all have Italian titles, they are in fact mock-Italian, almost certainly published in France – the game is given away by the couple of captions which don’t quite work as native Italian usage. ‘La Vipresa’ isn’t a real word – it reads either as a mangled ‘vipera’ or viper, or a mis-transcription of something else entirely. ‘La Forza in contrasto’ is grammatically the kind of thing a French speaker would construct by translating too literally, rather than something an Italian captioner would naturally write.

This portfolio is now in the British Library collection, having entered public acceptability after languishing in the library’s notorious access-very-limited Private Case for many years.

The titles of the plates are:
     La Nutrice (The Wet-Nurse)
     La Forza in contrasto (Forces Opposed)
     La Repugnanza (Revulsion)
     La Tortura (Torture)
     La Vipresa (The Viperess?)
     L'Abbondanza (Abundance)
     Il Disgusto (Disgust)
     Il Godimento (Enjoyment)
     La Danza (The Dance)
     Il Viaggio (The Journey)
     Il Paradiso di Maometto (The Paradise of Muhammad)