One delinquent book-borrower might’ve been a bit embarrassed by his efforts to become a “Master of Sex.”
After 54 years, a racy marriage manual was finally returned to its home at the New York Public Library, where it was due back on Aug. 17, 1959. The borrower’s in-law mailed the book to the Fifth Avenue branch last year all the way from Scottsdale, Arizona.
The manual’s title, “Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique,” may sound tame – but its sexy subject matter is anything but.
“As for a description of the book, I’ll venture only so far as to say it’s a very wordy and very scientific instruction manual for sexual activity written in 1926,” managing librarian Billy Parrott wrote in a post on the library’s website. “However dry and scientific, it is certainly more juicy than ‘Tropic of Cancer!’”
The popular book was penned by a Dutch gynecologist and is filled with detailed descriptions, graphs and diagrams that make it “not a prude’s book,” according to the National Review.
Parrott perused the scientific sex manual for notes written by readers over the years. He found just one sentence underlined describing men who “only care to relieve their own tensions and care nothing for their wives as an individual or mate.”
Despite the borrower’s research, he didn’t get lucky in love, his in-law said.
“We found this book amongst my late brother-in-law’s things,” he wrote in a note attached to the package. “Funny thing is, the book didn’t support his efforts with his first and only marriage, it failed. No wonder he hid the book. So sorry. A shocked in-law.”
Luckily, the library caps late fees at $12 per book — though hoarders will also be charged for the price of the book as well.