Nell Gwyn's naughty book pops up at auction

Naked body parts leap off the page of the only book believed to have belonged to the 17th-century courtesan

- Donna Ferguson

Nell Gwyn was an illiterate actor who became the mistress of Charles II, gave birth to a duke and slept in a bed made of silver. But although she was praised for her wit and beauty by the diarist Samuel Pepys, and showered with luxuries by the king, she never learned to read and write.

She is thought to have owned one book, however, and the “erotically charged” illustrated popup volume, printed in London in 1675, is expected to fetch between £15,000 and £20,000 at auction next month.

Readers of the text, a copy of Johann Remmelin’s A Survey of the Microcosme, are invited to undress the naked bodies of men and women by lifting flaps to reveal their “veins, nerves, muscles, bones, sinews and ligaments”.

First published in 1613 in Germany as an anatomy textbook for surgeons and sculptors, the 1675 edition in English is so rare that only six are known to exist. It was donated to the Royal Society of Medicine in 1842 and has been in its collection ever since.