Dime Novels Led To Boy's Death By Lynching

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Kansas city, Jan. 24 - The Times' Wichita, Kansas, special says: Reports are received here to the effect that Sheriff Shenneman was shot while arresting Charles Cobb, alias Smith, a desperado, near Udell station yesterday afternoon and died last night. By the aid of neighbors Smith was held at a farm house where he was captured to await assistance from Winfield. Upon receipt of the intelligence at Winfield twenty-five armed men proceeded to the scene of the tragedy and hung Cobb to the nearest tree. Cobb also killed a constable in Butler county a few days before" (Las Vegas Daily Gazette, January 25, 1883)

"During Wednesday evening he confessed to Mrs. Shenneman, the widow of the dead sheriff, that he was Charles Cobb, and gave her his revolver. Subsequently he stated to Shenneman that he had been led to the committal of the lawless act by reading the exploits of Jesse James and other desperadoes..." (Arkansas City Weekly, February 7, 1883).

"A Jefferson County constable tried to arrest a young person by the name of Charles Cobb on Saturday, January 13, 1883. Jefferson County is northeast of Topeka. Cobb was wanted for promiscuously brandishing a knife and a revolver at a country dance the week before. Instead of surrendering, Cobb whipped out one of his deadly six-shooters and killed the constable. After the shooting, Cobb mounted a horse and rode off in a southwesterly direction. Possibly he was making for Hunnewell, Kansas, and from there to take the cattle trail to Texas.

"Sheriff Shenneman received a telegram from the authorities stating that the fleeing murderer would probably pass through or near Winfield, and to intercept him if possible. Shenneman circulated cards giving the desperado’s description and offering the usual reward for his capture.

"Cobb carried a Winchester rifle and many other weapons, and if he was recognized during his flight, the invitation to tackle a perambulating arsenal was declined.

"Charles Cobb came to Winfield during the morning of Monday, January 15th, and then traveled north toward Udall. He was seen by a farmer to stop near the corner of Mr. Worden’s farm in Vernon Township and read the placards located there. One of them was of himself.

"The fleeing Cobb stopped at the Jacobus house, in Maple Township, in the evening. Cobb told Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus that his name was Smith and that he had just come from Texas with a herd of cattle. He further stated that he was seeking work till spring. They told him they did not need help then. Cobb then asked if he could pay board and stay a week, so he could look around. Jacobus agreed, and received payment for a week’s board. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobus testified later that Cobb had a shotgun in his possession and noticed he always carried a revolver and slept with it under his pillow. They thought this was simply his 'cowboy ways' and let it pass.

"On the Sunday before the shooting Cobb showed some boys his skill as a marksman. Cobb was breaking bottles thrown into the air with a single shot from his revolver.

"The schoolmaster, who also boarded with the Jacobus family, received one of the description cards sent out by the Sheriff. He came to Winfield and informed the Sheriff of his suspicions on Monday evening, January 22nd. That same evening Shenneman informed a friend that he had located his man and in less than twenty-four hours would have him in hand. The Sheriff was cautioned to be careful as the boy was clearly a desperate character and would shoot to kill. Shenneman said he would go prepared and could shoot as quick as anyone. On Tuesday morning about nine o’clock the law officer put his Winchester in his buggy, strapped on his revolver and left for the Jacobus house.

"Mrs. Jacobus stated that on Tuesday morning, January 23rd, Cobb’s week’s board was out so they relented and hired him to work. As they were all sitting at lunch, some one drove up and called Mr. Jacobus out. He soon came back and said that Dr. Jones, of Udall, was out there and would stop for lunch. Dr. Jones was an assumed name used by the Sheriff. Charles Cobb was all this time sitting at the table. Mr. Jacobus - and the man introduced as Dr. Jones - passed through the kitchen and the 'doctor' looked very sharply at the prisoner. The two men went into the other room and Shenneman pulled off his overcoat and threw it on a chair. About this time young Cobb got up from the table, took his hat and gloves and started toward the door.

"Mr. Shenneman then sprang upon Cobb from behind. A scuffle followed and they fell to the floor. Two shots rang out with both bullets lodging in Shenneman’s stomach, but he continued to hold Cobb. Mr. Jacobus ran in and took the pistol away from the prisoner and told him to give up or die.

"The Caldwell paper reported 'At all events, it appears to be certain that when the latter (Cobb) got through, he started to go out, when the sheriff, thinking he was likely able to handle what appeared to be a mere boy, threw his arms around Cobb from behind. The latter managed to get hold of his self-cocking revolver, and pointing it backward, fired, the ball penetrating the sheriffs bowels.' The prisoner then cried out that he would give up, not to kill him. Mr. Shenneman then said, 'Hold him, he has killed me.' The sheriff staggered into a nearby bedroom and fell onto the bed. Jacobus and the school teacher, after tying up the prisoner, went to assist Shenneman.

"Sheriff Shenneman later said that as he looked at the fugitive, he decided that he wouldn’t pull a revolver on such a mere boy. He would catch Cobb and hold him while the other fellow disarmed him. After the Sheriff grabbed Cobb, he found that he couldn’t handle him.

"Mr. Jacobus said: 'When Shenneman jumped on him, I followed up close. As soon as I could, I got hold of his revolver and held it on him until he said he would give up. I then called the teacher from the school house and we tied him.'

"Sheriff Shenneman could not be moved. Plans were made to bring the prisoner to Winfield in the Sheriffs buggy by Cowley County Deputy Taylor and Undersheriff McIntire. A wagon-load of men, having heard the news and intent on seizing Cobb, met them that evening about a mile from town. The Sheriffs buggy was lighter and the team faster, so the officers outdistanced and lost the pursuers.

"The officers came into town in a roundabout way and unloaded their prisoner just back of D. A. Millington’s residence. They went through the back yard into Rev. Platter’s wood shed. Cobb was held there by Deputy McIntire while Taylor scouted around. Taylor found that the jail was surrounded by a mob, which had spread out and was also patrolling the alleys in the vicinity.

"Deputy McIntire in the meantime was holding the prisoner in the wood shed, and they could hear footsteps prowling around the area. The prisoner said he wanted to be shackled to him and given a pistol; then he would go into the jail. George McIntire wouldn’t accede to that request so Cobb hunted around and got a smooth stick of stove wood. Soon the crowd around the jail was distracted and the mob rushed to another part of town. The officers seized the opportunity and hurried the prisoner over and put him in jail.

"The Courier reporter and other Winfield folks returned by way of Udall where the train had been held for them. An immense crowd had gathered at the depot expecting the prisoner to arrive in that way. They made a rush for the coach. They were, with difficulty, persuaded that the man was not there. It was not a crowd of howling rabble but an organized body of determined men. They were bound to avenge the brave officer to the last drop of blood.

"The crowd then marched up the main streets of the city. They scattered guards out onto the roads over which they expected the prisoner to arrive. Others watched the jail while hundreds gathered on the streets in little knots and discussed plans for capturing the prisoner from the officers.

"One more venturesome than the rest went about with a large rope on his arm and blood in his eye. The crowd surged too and fro until long after midnight when they began to thin out. Under the influence of more sober-minded citizens, they gave up their ideas of mob violence. About this time McIntire and Taylor appeared on the street and the few remaining citizens were eager to learn the whereabouts of the prisoner. Little was learned before morning and even then the location where he was being held was known to only a select few.

"On Wednesday morning, January 24, 1883, a Courier reporter learned of the prisoner‘s whereabouts and interviewed him. The reporter copied the following description of the Jefferson County murderer that was telegraphed to the Sheriff.

“'Charles Cobb, about nineteen or twenty years old: light complexion: no whiskers or mustache: blue eyes: a scar over eye or cheek, don’t know which: height five to five feet three inches; weight 125 to 135 pounds: had black slouch hat: dark brown clothes and wore large comforter: may have large white hat: was riding a black mare pony with roach mane, and carried a Winchester Rifle and two revolvers: had downcast look.'

"The prisoner crouched in a comer of a small room. After introducing himself, the reporter asked the prisoner for his story of the trouble. He said: 'My name is George Smith, and I am about eighteen years old. I came up to Dodge City from Texas with a herd of cattle, in the employ of W. Wilson. Have been on the trail about a year. My parents reside in Pennsylvania. I was paid sixty dollars when the cattle were shipped.

“'I then rode east, intending to work my way back, and on a week from last Monday, it being too cold to ride, I stopped at Jacobus’ and tried to get work, or to board, until I could look around. On Tuesday as I was eating lunch a man came in who was introduced as Dr. Jones. As I got up to go out, the Doctor jumped on me without saying a word. My first impression was that it was a conspiracy to rob me, and I wrestled to defend myself.'

“'I had a revolver on my person because I was among strangers, had some money, and was used to keeping it about me. If he had only told me, he was an officer, and had put his gun on me as he ought to have done if he believed I was the desperate character I am credited with being, this business would never have happened.

“'I am no criminal, and I am not afraid if the law is allowed to take its course. If a mob attacks me, all I ask is the officers will do me the justice to allow me to defend myself. If they will take off these irons and put a six-shooter in my hand, I will take my chance against the kind of men who will come here to mob me. I am guilty only of defending myself, and I ask the law either to defend me or accord me the privilege of defending myself.'

"The newspaper reporter stated: 'In personal appearance the prisoner looks to be a bright, healthy, smooth-faced boy, and has but few of the characteristics of a desperado. Cobb is a perfect picture of robust health, muscular and compact as an athlete. The prisoner’s description tallies almost exactly with that of the Jefferson County murderer. He has a small scar above his lip on the right comer, and above his eye. In talking the captive uses excellent language, speaks grammatically and shows evidence of good breeding.'

"The prisoner was taken to Wichita later Wednesday afternoon by deputy Finch and confined in the Wichita jail. The lawmen wanted him out of the way of violence in case of Sheriff Shenneman’s death.

"On Thursday morning, January 25, 1883, the Sheriff of Jefferson County arrived, accompanied by a farmer who lived near Cobb and knew him well. They identified the prisoner as Charles Cobb. Cobb feigned not to know his old neighbor and still stuck to his cow-boy story.

"Sheriff Shenneman died Thursday evening at 9:45 p.m., in Udall, Kansas.

"On Saturday morning, January 27th, Sheriff Thralls of Sumnner County, Sheriff Watt of Sedgwick County, and Cowley County Deputy Taylor brought Charles Cobb back to Winfield in a carriage. Parties on the north-bound train passed them between Mulvane and Udall.

"This news electrified citizens in the community. In the evening about two hundred resolute men gathered at the crossing. They boarded the incoming train thinking that Cobb might have been put aboard at some way station, but he was not found. The vigilantes returned to the city and placed squads at each bridge and on streets surrounding the jail.

"The carriage with the prisoner arrived about eleven o’clock. The officers came by way of the ford at Tunnel Mill, thus enabling them to avoid outlying pickets, and drove to the crossing of Fuller street and Eleventh Avenue. Deputy Taylor was then dispatched to the jail to see how the land lay. He arrived just after a squad had searched the jail for the prisoner Cobb. Taylor quickly returned with the news that it was certain death to put Cobb in the jail.

"Sumner County Sheriff Thralls and Sedgwick County Sheriff Watt took the prisoner out of the carriage and started south on foot with him.

"Taylor was instructed to take the team out into the country. In going out of town, a squad of vigilantes caught the deputy and brought him back. From all parts of town men came running, wild with excitement. They formed in a dense mass around Deputy Taylor and clamored to know what had been done with the prisoner. As the crowd surged around the brave police officer, it felt as if the very air was laden with vengeance.

"Soon someone cried 'the Brettun,' and almost to a man the crowd started in a run for the hotel. Here they found the door barred, but one of their number was allowed inside. He looked in the room of Butler County Sheriff Douglass, and found nothing.

"The vigilantes then returned to the group holding Taylor and demanded that he tell them where they could find Cobb. Soon the horde went again to the jail and searched it from top to bottom. They then searched the courthouse and outbuildings. The search being fruitless, they re-turned exasperated, and for a few moments it looked as if Taylor would be abused.

"Deputy Taylor was finally compelled to tell where he had left the prisoner. A rush was made for that part of town, carrying Taylor along to show the exact spot. A vigorous, but fruitless, search of barns and outbuildings in the vicinity continued for the balance of the night.

"By this time Sheriffs Thralls and Watt, with the prisoner, had traveled out the Badger Creek road to William Dunn’s, arriving at two o’clock, and failed in securing a conveyance with which to transport the prisoner to Douglass. They went on until they found a team and wagon. Sheriff Watt then took the prisoner to Wichita, by way of Douglass, where Cobb was to remain for some time.

"Cobb was returned from Wichita on Wednesday evening, January 31st, by Deputy Taylor and again lodged in jail. Mrs. Shenneman went in and talked to him for a few moments. As she looked into his eyes, the criminal broke down completely and wept like a child. Soon people began to gather and many citizens saw Cobb for the first time. About eleven o’clock he asked to see Mrs. Shenneman again and confessed to her that he was Charles Cobb. He asked her to write to the wife of the constable in Jefferson County and tell her that he was sorry for killing him. He asked her to keep his revolver. Afterward, to Sheriff McIntire, he said he was led astray by reading the exploits of Jesse James and other desperados in the dime novels.

"Mr. William Shenneman (who was a police officer in Bay City, Michigan) and Deputy Taylor remained to help Sheriff McIntire should anything occur. By two o’clock in the morning everything was quiet about the jail and on the streets so Mr. Shenneman and Deputy Taylor retired to the house across the walk.

"Startled late pedestrians saw a company of men, their faces covered with black masks and thoroughly organized, marching down Ninth Avenue toward the jail. They went to Fuller Street where the leader flashed a dark lantern. The mob then marched back and tiled into the courthouse yard.Four of them, with pistols drawn, rushed into the sheriffs office, located in front of the jail. The black-masked leader ordered Sheriff McIntire to throw his hands up and the order was quickly obeyed. He then demanded the keys and Sheriff McIntire handed them over.

"The masked Captain then threw the jail door open and said 'Number 1, 2 and 3 to your posts!' and three men trotted into the jail. He then ordered 'Reserve, guard the door!' The three men came out leading the prisoner. The Captain and his three men stayed at the office door for about five minutes before he demanded: 'DO you promise you won’t follow us?' No answer was immediately given so the captain shouted 'Halt!' to the men on the sidewalk with the prisoner. He then turned to the Sheriff again and said, 'Now say you won’t follow us, and say it D--m quick!' He received no answer.

"The other three left, but the Captain delayed for a moment while standing in the door, with revolver drawn. He again ordered, 'Command. Halt! Send me two men!' The men came and took his place as the leader left.

"The two masked men guarded the Sheriff for about five minutes. They then pulled the office door shut and lee. The company surrounded the criminal and marched him down Ninth Avenue to Main Street. From there they moved north to Eighth Street and then turned west until they reached the railroad bridge. By this time a multitude had gathered and were following them. Two squad members fell back and with drawn revolvers they shouted 'Keep your distance.'

"The masked vigilantes got to the railroad bridge where a rope, prepared beforehand, was placed about Cobb’s neck and tied to the bridge beam.The moon was just up; and several boys who were following, crept up into the brush on the river bank and saw the rest of the proceedings. After the rope was tied, the unidentified leader, in a gruff voice, ordered Cobb to say what he had to say quickly. The boys in the brush heard Cobb say, 'Oh, don’t boys!' and 'Father, have mercy on Me!' Two men wearing masks then took him up and dropped him through between the bridge railings.

"Cobb fell about ten feet and rebounded half the distance. The black-masked mob then filed on across the bridge, leaving two of their number to guard the rear. These stood until the others had gone on across, when they too retreated. The crowd came up and looked at the victim. His body continued to hang there while the coroner was summoned. The scene was visited by hundreds. The County Coroner arrived, empaneled a jury, and only then was the body taken down.

"The coroner’s jury returned its verdict the next day, February 2, 1883, which was 'Charles Cobb came to his death at the hands of parties unknown to the jury.'

"Mr. George C. Rembaugh owned and operated the 'Telegram' newspaper at that time. Many years later he was quoted as submitting the following story. 'A coroner’s jury was called to sit on the case. The main witness, when questioned as to whether or not he could identity any member of the mob answered, 'Why yes, Judge.' He then addressed the foreman, 'The leader looked a lot like you and was built a lot like you. He even moved around like you do.' A few more questions were asked and the jury handed down its verdict that the deceased came to his death at the hands of parties unknown. Mr. Rembaugh insisted that he, while hid out, saw the mob and he, like the main witness, thought the leader of the mob resembled the jury foreman.

"On the same day as the verdict, the following telegram was received:

"'Will you box my son and send him by express to this place? If not, hold him until I come. C. M. Cobb.' The corpse was placed in a casket and sent to Valley Falls (in Jefferson County) on the Santa Fe train Friday afternoon" (Dr. William W. Bottorff and Mary Ann Wortman. Articles on Various Subjects from the Old Cowley County Newspapers and Interviews With Oldtimers. Sheriff A. T. Shenneman of Cowley County, Kansas 1880-1883).

"The fate of Cobb, the boy who was lynched at Winfield on Wednesday last, was a sad, but a deserved one. He stated just before he was hung that it was reading the sensational narratives of the exploits of Frank and Jesse James that led him to destruction. 

"We have frequently seen Atchison boys pouring over these works of the devil, and afterward imitating the supposed exploits of the James boys in their play. This is extremely dangerous, and the sooner the fact is impressed upon the youthful mind that these men were not heroes, but brutal, cowardly robbers and murderers, the better it will be for the rising generation. 

"All such books and plays should be suppressed, and that murder and robbery is heroic eradicated from the youthful mind, by a vigorous application of the paternal slipper. Let the boys learn that honest, patient labor is heroic, and that dishonesty and crime are despicable, but keep forever out of their reach these untrue stories that have already ruined so many" (Winfield [Kansas] Courier, February 8, 1883).

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Images courtesy of Carleton College Dime Novel Collection, with our thanks.
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The Most Notorious Publisher In American History

by Stephen J. Gertz

He stood at the crossroads of Modernism and censorship, twentieth century literature, copyright law, and cultural history. He introduced America to James Joyce's Ulysses, D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, Arthur Schnitzler's Reigen, Alfred Jarry's The Garden of Priapus, etc. He also published Loose Shoulder Straps by "Alain Dubois" aka poet, litterateur, and author of The Rhyming Dictionary, Clement Wood; Padlocks and Girdles of Chastity by Alcide Bonneau (1928); Sacred Prostitution and Marriage By Capture (1932); Lady Chatterley's Husbands (1931, written by Antony Gudaitis, aka Tony Gud);  and the famed homoerotic novel, A Scarlet Pansy (1932 deluxe issue, by "Robert Scully," almost surely poet Robert McAlmon, with a 1933 trade edition). He edited and published Two Worlds, a hardbound literary quarterly whose contributing editors were Arthur Symons, Ezra Pound, and Ford Maddox Ford. He was a master of mail-order book sales. The list of imprints he established is as long as a leg. He was Jean Valjean to New York Society For the Supression of Vice leader John S. Sumner's Javert. He spent nine years in jail on state and federal obscenity convictions. He gave his name to a  key Supreme Court 1st Amendment decision. Samuel Roth's personal and professional activities - they were one and the same - ultimately allowed Americans to read whatever they wanted to; his sacrifice at the Court in 1957 made it safe for U.S. citizens to buy legal American copies of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in 1958 and William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch in 1959 without Mrs. Grundy at their door with SWAT team and incinerator.

Roth, at right, in his Poetry Book Shop, Greenwich Village 1920.

"Samuel Roth…was a man of considerable culture. Some of the material he sold was trash; some of it was unquestionably literature" (Charles Rembar). He believed that "reading is itself is a great good, any kind of reading is better than no reading and some people will read only rather low material, which I am willing to supply" (Samuel Roth, as paraphrased by his attorney, Charles Rembar, in his The End of Obscenity).

Sam Roth (1893-1974), if he is remembered at all, is infamous for his literary piracies. After he serially published twelve excerpts from Joyce's Ulysses without authorization in Two Worlds, Sylvia Beach, who had published the first edition of Ulysses in Paris, at Joyce's behest organized an international protest in 1927 against Roth with 167 internationally respected intellectuals and artists signing the document, including Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, and Albert Einstein. He was immediately vilified. This incident has deeply scarred Roth's legacy. Jay A. Gertzman, with evidence not available to earlier scholars, makes a strong case for reappraising Samuel Roth's guilt, both legal and ethical, in a new and definitive biography.

Issue 1, No. 1, December, 1925.

Gertzman, who in his Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940 (1999), exposed the edgy world of the clandestine, East Coast-U.S. publication of sexually-themed literature, has now, after at least fifteen years of research, published this long-awaited biography of Roth, Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist, the first deeply researched, full-length investigation of the man and his milieu.

Samuel Roth.

Grade C-Z moviemakers were once consigned to Gower Gulch, a low-rent, run-down section of Hollywood near the major studios but a light year distant from their  superior quality; it was also known as Poverty Row. Brazen upstarts, outsiders, and finaglers with ambition but little money and desperate to distribute their product through a system dominated by the big studios vied for the eyeballs of movie-goers. New York publishers short on cash but long on brash found themselves in similar circumstances. Being proudly Jewish and thus not well-connected to or well-perceived by book publishing's elitist, gentile power-centers didn't help. Having a constitutional attraction to literature, modern and classical, fiction  and non-fiction that defied contemporary moral standards was certainly a disadvantage. A strong anti-authoritarian streak and determination to publish and accept the consequences (but not without a fight) in concert with a fundamental aversion to censorship in a free society only made matters worse. Being a blatant huckster came with the territory; publishing was a Darwinian business. Easily victimized, you did what you had to do to survive. Roth, a downtown publisher with uptown aspirations, was all of these things, and a writer, too, a brilliant Columbia graduate with artistic pretensions and a voice for self-pity. Born in Galacia, he was raised on New York's Lower East Side, where chutzpah was sliced thick and Roth's portion super-sized.

Roth's mug shot, 1930, upon beginning his two-month prison
sentence for selling copies of Joyce's Ulysses in Philadelphia.

An outsider to begin with, the Ulysses controversy made him an outcast, a  pariah for his sin as "desecrater of literary expression." Gertzman carefully mounts a strong case that Roth was not the philistine he has been made out to be. 

• Roth did not "pirate" Ulysses. Because of a clause in contemporary U.S. copyright law written to protect the domestic printing trade, books that were not printed on an American-based press were not granted copyright protection. Ulysses was, within the U.S., in the public domain. Blame Congress.

• There is evidence that Joyce and Roth's mutual friend, Ezra Pound, acting as Joyce's literary agent, gave Roth the go-ahead, and that arrangements for payment had been made.

• Joyce's outrage was disingenuous. While sincerely trying to protect his image as avant-garde genius he was also a shrewd businessman not without keen commercial instincts. The furor of his friends and supporters was exaggerated. Edited excerpts of Ulysses had been previously published and no one complained about it. A managed protest could only increase awareness and build demand for the book's ultimate legal publication in full in the United States (Random House, 1934). Genius aesthete versus greedy capitalist barbarian always makes a good story.

• Joyce's concern that sales of the Beach edition of the book would be hurt by Roth's excerpts to a broad audience (Roth wanted his publications bought by the average man on the street; his overriding goal was to popularize literature of all kinds and get it to the hinterlands) was groundless and something of a canard. With its limited press run and price the Beach edition was never meant or expected to attract a broad readership beyond wealthy collectors.

Gertzman goes on in depth and what we take away is that there is plenty of blame to spread amongst the actors in this bit of literary theater. Roth was not a boogey-man. He was, to a large degree, the perfect scapegoat.

Sketch, undoubtedly by Mahlon Blaine, for an advertisement.

Are you aware that Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a memoir concerning his incestuous relationship with his sister, Elisabeth? In 1951 Roth published My Sister and I (NY: Boar's Head) based upon a manuscript in Nietzsche's hand that fell into Roth's possession in 1924. Its first edition went through fourteen printings. He initially advertised its publication in 1924 but ran out of money (Roth never got rich publishing anything, much less Ulysses, and was always in a financial bind of some sort). After a raid on Roth's offices by John S. Sumner in 1929 the manuscript was thought lost. It resurfaced during a 1940s inventory. Real or apocryphal Nietzsche? Gertzman presents the critical arguments, strong on both sides. The jury remains out.

Roth was a big cat who, when wounded, roared and attacked, a Lion of Judah. He was a "steadfast Jew and Zionist...who became so distressed by what he felt was lack of support from his co-religionists that he, after claiming to be instructed by Jesus in a vision, wrote Jews Must Live: An Account of the Persecution of the World by Israel on All Frontiers of Civilization, a vicious 325-page anti-Semitic tract that was used by Nazis for propaganda and is kept in print by right-wing white-supremacist groups today" (Michael Bronski).

NY: Golden Hind Press, 1934.

• • •

Thrill of the Trade Department:  around ten years ago I had Roth's personal copy of another publisher's piracy of A Scarlet Pansy (NY: Nesor [Rosen, backwards], 1937) pass through my hands. Within, Roth made penciled revisions, cuts, and expurgations for his planned reissue (NY: Royal, 1940). The book also possessed subsequent annotations by sexual folklorist and bibliographer Gershon Legman, who worked for Roth during the 1930s, recording what Roth was up to with this book, from Legman's library, acquired directly from his widow, Judith. I felt as if I was sitting next to Roth as he worked on the book. Thanks, GL.

• • •

Roth lost his 1957 appeal to the Supreme Court to vacate his 1956 conviction for obscenity; he went to jail. But he won the war. The Court's Constitutional test in Roth v. United States - that for a work to be judged obscene its "dominant theme taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest" of the "average person, applying contemporary community standards" without any redeeming social value whatsoever opened the door to soft-porn. Soon, "redeeming social value" could be found in anything no matter how hard-core, particularly if publishers hired medical professionals or literary critics (real or otherwise) to write prefaces explaining why Doing It With Dad and Brother Dan While Mom Sings Hawaiian War Chant presents an intimate family interpersonal dynamic with deep psychological insight into the human condition and a penetrating sociological view of the exotic byways of love in an All-American metropolis, thus saving it from  Vice Squad condemnation.

Scholars and citizens with an interest in modern literature and the struggle for frank expression and publication of  candid material in a free society will be captivated by Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist. I believe every library should own a copy; it's a must-acquire. For those fascinated by the shadow world of clandestine publishing and modern lit. in the U.S. it's a must-read.

But it's not a free read; you have to pay for it and that's how it should be. Yet at $74.95 it may be a bit too un-free. Issued by University Press of Florida it's a case study of what has gone so wrong with university press and books-on-books publishing. While the volume is very attractive its production quality is not what you'd expect from a book costing $75. And the $75 cost is likely connected to its print run, which, given the current state of the market (dismal), cannot have been more than 500 copies.

I can't help but think that if Roth were alive and the publisher, the book would have been issued as a fine trade paperback for $25 in an initial print-run of 2,000 copies and distributed via mail order and through every newsstand location in the country with accompanying hard-sell suggestive and sensational hoopla and ballyhoo using every free marketing tool available to spread the word that this is a sizzler, a book the major publishers found too hot to handle, an important book on American literary and publishing history about the man who died so that Ulysses, Casanova Jr.'s Tales, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Pageant of Lust, and The Strange Career of Mr. Hoover Under Two Flags (Roth's best-selling exposé of President Herbert Hoover, 1931) could live, and made it possible for the huddled masses to not only breathe but read free.

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GERTZMAN, Jay A. Samuel Roth: Infamous Modernist.  Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013. xxviii, 387, [1] pp. Illustrations throughout. Illustrated boards. $74.95. Release: 4/23/2013.

UPDATE: 
A PRE-PUBLICATION DISCOUNT ($30 total) HAS BEEN EXTENDED THROUGH JUNE: Order online at http://www.upf.com/ book.asp?id=GERTZ001
This link will appear as: University Press of Florida: Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist
Click on “add cloth to cart”
Click on “apply code” (just above the “check out” button) and enter code: PP113
Follow ordering instructions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface

Chapter One: 1893-1916: From a Galician Shtetl to Columbia University.

Chapter Two: 1917-1925: Prelude to an International Protest: A Rising, Pugnacious Man of Letters.

Chapter Three: 1925-27: “Damn his impertinence. Bloody Crook”: Roth Publishes Joyce.

Chapter Four: 1928-34: Roth Must Live: A Successful Business and Its Bankruptcy.

Chapter Five : 1934: Jews Must Live. “We Meet Our Destiny on the Road We Take To Avoid It”

Chapter Six 1934-39: A Stretch in the Federal Penitentiary.

Chapter Seven: 1940-1949: Roth Breaks Parole, Uncovers a Nazi Plot, Gives “Dame Post Office” Fits, and Tells His Own Story in Mail Order Advertising Copy.

Chapter Eight: 1949-1952: Times Square, Peggy Roth, Southern Gothic, Celine, and Nietzsche.

Chapter Nine: 1952-57: The Windsors, Winchell, Kefauver: Back to Lewisburg.

Chapter Ten: 1958-74: “It Had Been a Long Time since Someone Like You Had Appeared In the World”: Roth Fulfills his Mission.

Appendix: Samuel Roth’s Imprints and Business Names.

Bibliography.

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Other books by Jay A. Gertzman:

A Descriptive Bibliography of Lady Chatterley's Lover. With Essays Toward a Publishing History of the Novel.

Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica 1920-1940. 
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Full Disclosure: Mr. Gertzman and I are friends, and he kindly acknowledges me in the book as a source, however modest my contribution - and it was, indeed, very modest.

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Image of My Sister and I advertisement courtesy of Mr. Gertzman's website, with our thanks.
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Two Scarce Erotic Novels From 1787 Exposed (May Be NSW)

by Stephen J. Gertz

A couple of extremely rare erotic books recently came into the marketplace, wowsers both, each from the eighteenth century and scarcely seen but when seen goggle eyes and boggle mind.

Mémoires de Saturnin (1787), is one of the best of the many reprints of Histoire de Dom B***, Portier des Chartreux by lawyer Jean-Charles Gervaise de Latouche (1715-1782); “one of the most celebrated French erotic novels of the 18th century” (Kearney). It is the most important erotic novel in the period immediately prior to Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748) and one of the most frequently reprinted books of all erotic literature.

Originally published in 1741 in two editions (true first not firmly established) it has become an old warhorse, a classic anti-clerical erotic novel that under its original title went through seventeen editions  between 1741 and 1960.

"Saturnin" is the surname of the protagonist, Dom Bourge, "the fruit of the incontinence of the reverend Celestine Father of the town of B," and a porter in the convent at Chartreux.  As you might expect from  a so surnamed person, saturnalias ensue. "My heart is agitated - is it through fear that I shall be reproached with revealing the mysteries of the Church? Alas! I must overcome this compunction. Who does not know that all men are men, and especially the monks? they have certainly the faculty of cooperating in the propagation of the species; and why should we hinder them…?"

Why stop there? The biblical story of Sodom is considered  slanderous to homosexual activity, which gets a workout satisfying to all concerned. The book was banned not so much for its pornographic nature as its  anti-religious aspects, a greater threat to civilization than indecency.

Patrick J. Kearney notes seven editions 1772-1946 under the title Histoire de Gouberdom; three as Histoire de Saturnin; twenty-three as Le Portier des chartreux 1784-1954; five editions 1787-1815 titled Memoires de Saturnin; and eight English editions 1743-1930. Most may be aware of the novel as published by Maurice Girodias' Ophelia Press in 1958 under the title The Life and Adventures of Father Silas by Beauregard de Farniete, apparently a reprint of the London 1907 (i.e. Paris: Charles Hirsch, 1910) English edition with the same title. During the 1960s, a slew of paperback reprints based upon the Ophelia Press edition was issued under various titles by American pornsters. There are undoubtedly editions that have yet to be recorded. Mr. Kearney's checklist is the most complete to date.

The edition under notice is one of the most highly desirable, with twenty-four unsigned engraved plates by François Rolland Elluin after designs by Antoine Borel. It was anonymously published in Paris by Cazin in 1787 as two parts in one book, in octavo and 18mo issues. The volume under notice is one of only three known large paper octavo copies.

“C’est la plus belle edition que l’on puisse trouver de ce roman érotique et l’une des plus réussies dans les productions de Cazin” (Cohen. “This edition is the most beautiful that you can find of this erotic novel and one of the most successful productions of Cazin”).

Of the engravings, Pascal Pia, in Les Livres de l’Enfer, notes “Les Meilleures que l'on ait faites pour illustrer ce classiques de l'érotisme” (“The best that have been made ​​to illustrate this classic of erotica”).

Publisher Hubert Martin Cazin (1724-1795 was the son of a bookseller in Reims, a trusted member of the community of booksellers and printers of the city.

He followed in his father’s profession but with a taste and clientele for prohibited books. As a result he was enjoined from bookselling in 1754. In 1784, he moved to Paris and began his career as a publisher.

Cazin editions were, and remain, highly regarded for their production quality and licentious character. For his efforts Cazin earned many fines and two involuntary vacations in the Bastille.

The anonymously written “by a sacrificer to Venus,” Les Heures de Paphos, was published in 1787 with four subsequent editions 1864-1875. The 1864 edition was anonymously issued by Auguste Poulet-Malassis in Brussels and falsely dated 1787. The 1872 edition was falsely dated 1787. The 1875 edition was falsely dated 1789.

The illustrations - twelve engraved plates plus frontispiece - are in the manner of Claude-Louis Desrais (1746-1816), painter, illustrator, engraver, and student of Italian painter, Francesco Casanova (Giacomo's younger brother). Desrais was particularly known for his gallant/erotic illustrations to contemporary novels.

Today’s post is false-dated 2013.  It was actually anonymously written in 2074 with false imprint Santa Monica-in-the-Sea, CA  (i.e. Ulan Bator: Mongol Art Editions).
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GERVAISE De LATOUCHE, Jean-Charles. Mémoires de Saturnin, écrits par lui-même. Nouvelle édition, corrigée & augmentée avec Figures. Premiêre [and] seconde partie. Londres [Paris]: n.p. [Cazin], 1787. Later edition, two parts in one volume. 235 pp. Twenty-four engraved plates by Elluin after Borel.

Pia 622. Dutel A-523. Cohen 431.

[DESRAIS, Claude-Louis, illustrator]. Les Heures de Paphos. Contes moraux par un sacrificateur de Venus. Paris: n.p., 1787. First edition, large paper. Octavo. 74 pp. Frontispiece and twelve engraved plates after Desrais.

Pia 611. Dutel A-496. Cohen 486.

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Illustrations courtesy of Camille Sourget Livres Anciens, currently offering these titles, with our thanks.

Title pages from Dutel, Bibliographie des Ouvrages Erotiques...1650-1880.

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Of Related Interest:

The Wages of Sin: : $80,000 For Rare Fanny Hill.

Hey Rare Book Guy! Is It Pornography, Erotica, or Curiosa? 
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The Princess and the Paparazzo: A Compelling and Important New Anthology On Ethical Photography

by Alastair Johnston

Daniel Girardin and Christian Pirker CONTROVERSIES; A Legal and Ethical History of Photography, Actes Sud/Musée de l'Elysée (Lausanne 2012, 312 pp., hardback, ISBN: 978-2-7427-9700-4 : 45 Euro)

Photography has always been controversial. First it was not considered an art, then its uses were questioned, and as it became a dominant part of our culture, battles were fought over aspects of its ethics and legality in a variety of contexts. (Most recently, on 4 December 2012 the New York Post published a front-page photo of a man on the tracks about to be hit by a subway train that raises ethical questions.) This book, the catalogue of a show at the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, reproduces and discusses many of the photographs exhibited. Consequently it provides the opportunity for a more thorough understanding of the show than might have been experienced and absorbed in a museum walk-through. Girardin is the exhibition's curator and his co-author Pirker is a Swiss lawyer who specializes in business and art law, and also collects photographs.

The book then is a discussion of how our taste and legal freedoms applied to photography have evolved since 1839. Images of naked children and dead people are two of the major battlegrounds in this history. Some photos were published for decades and then suddenly became illegal to view, while others were secret for a long time until they finally came to light. The adolescents of David Hamilton were celebrated in popular paperbacks like Dreams of a Young Girl (Collins, 1971) but today there would be outrage if they appeared in a magazine. Two photographers snuck into the bedroom of Bismarck in 1898, hours after his death, propped up his head on the pillows and took a photo which they then tried to sell to the papers. The family heard about it and acted swiftly: the negatives were confiscated and the photographers jailed (They had been offered the equivalent of $300,000 in today's money). But a copy survived and the image finally appeared in 1952 in a Frankfurter newspaper.

Remember this macabre joke? When Princess Diana died in August 1997, someone asked, Did you hear Diana was on the radio?

   Really?

   Yes, and all over the dashboard.

We know this because the crazed paparazzi in pursuit rushed into the tunnel to photograph the dying occupants of her limousine. When the photographers were charged with homicide, involuntary injury and failure to assist a person in danger, the very newspapers who were willing to shell out millions of dollars for their invasive photos of celebrities turned against them. But then a decade after they were acquitted, a photo of Diana dying appeared in the Italian press. This public lust never ends. Just this year there was the famous case of the paparazzo up a tree who snapped the topless Duchess of Cambridge for a French magazine. I didn't see the picture but assume her breasts look like others I have seen, and ironically the royal couple were next recorded in the South Pacific where they were greeted by topless natives at the airport!

Since its inception, manipulation of photography has been used to sway us. It's now common to doctor images in Photoshop, to remove unwanted parts, to extend pictures, to graft on parts of other images. Two of the most famous images of the roll-film era were staged: Robert Capa's "Death of a Republican Soldier," 1936, and Robert Doisneau's "Kissing Couple at City Hall," 1950, which respectively convey the horror of war and the power of love. I felt cheated when I discovered that Bill Brandt had staged the images in his "A Night in London" series (1938). He so wanted to be as good as Brassaï or Cartier-Bresson that he couldn't wait for the "decisive moment," so set it up. Doisneau, too, hired actors to pose for his picture, though the Capa mystery has never been fully explained.

Quite often there's no controversy until someone stirs things up. In 2007 the Blue Noses collective staged an exhibit in Paris, including a photo of two Russian police officers kissing, called "The Era of Mercy, 2005." The Russian Minister of Culture moved to ban the image as a "disgrace to Russia." The Gallery sued for defamation and the image went viral.

A bizarre recent turn of events in photo censorship involves smoking. Under French law certain photos of Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge Gainsbourg can only be published after retouching to remove their cigarettes. Sartre sans Gauloises, c'est incroyable!! Serge mis en nue? Sacre bleu d'Iliac! This is Stalinism! -- and yes the book does include a shot of Stalin accompanied by Molotov, Yezhov and others plus the same photo with the unfortunate Yezhov removed. (Yezhov was put in charge of the purges of the late 30s but when he was replaced by Beria he himself was tortured and executed. Moral: Never build a better Guillotine.)

Other doctored photos include the "Raising of the Red Flag on the Reichstag, 2 May 1945." After the famous (re-enacted) photo by Joe Rosenthal of American GIs raising the stars and stripes on Iwo Jima (since replicated by firemen at the site of the World Trade Center attack), the Russians thought it would be a good publicity move to stage a photo of their flag going up over Berlin. Yevgeny Khaldei, a press photographer, was flown to Berlin with a large homemade flag to get the shot. He photographed it in several locations, most notably over the Reichstag. But back in Moscow a small problem arose: the officer holding the flag clearly had watches on both wrists, an undeniable sign of looting. The photo was retouched before Tass published it.

There are plenty of shocking images in this book, from Nazi concentration camps to an American one (Abu Ghraib). The horrors of Bergen-Belsen were photographed by the British Army in April 1945, before the end of the war, but they believed that if the photos were published it might lead the Germans to try to cover up their atrocities or speed up mass-murder to cover their crimes. Also, the book asks, can you really depict the unspeakable in a photo and how does that alter our perception of it? As a macabre sidelight there is a shot of Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub. (I wonder if this was hung next to Gary Gross' image of Brooke Shields in the bath?)

Walter Benjamin wrote that "a photograph is technically reproducible indefinitely," so why should an excellent posthumous print from a photographer's original negative be considered a fake? Obviously there is the fetish value of the vintage print at stake here: a Diane Arbus photo printed by her sells for hundreds of thousands (her "Viva at Home" sold at Sotheby's for $194,500 in December 2011) while for a (relative) pittance you can get a reprint (Arbus's iconic "Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C.," a Neil Selkirk print, sold at Phillips de Pury, New York on October 2, 2012 for $74,500.). The same goes for many other artists like August Sander or Edward Weston. You can get a good deal on a Lee Friedlander print of an E.J. Bellocq glass plate whereas a Berenice Abbot print of an Atget plate will cost you twice as much.

In the case of Man Ray a collector spent a fortune ($2.3 million) on vintage prints that had impeccable provenance but turned out to be later prints. Not only did the collector get his money back but the prints were destroyed. However this calls into question the authenticity of dozens of similar excellent Man Ray prints now in museums. And there was a case in the US where Walter Rosenblum (who had control of the Hine archive) was printing Lewis Hine photos on old paper and adding the Hine studio stamp to the back to make them appear vintage. The slump in the value of Hine's exemplary work makes an interesting footnote to this story.

One segment I found informative concerned the work of Lehnert and Landrock. Before the First World War the Bohemian Lehnert practiced photography in Tunisia, documenting Arab life. He and Landrock lived in Cairo in the late twenties, and pursued a vision of Orientalism with Pictorialist postcards which they manufactured and sold through their firm, Orient Kunst Verlag in Leipzig. As you may know Islam forbids representation of religious figures. So how curious it is to see a 1998 Iranian poster claiming to be a portrait of the young Mohammed the Prophet of Islam. The image, it says, "is from the brush of a Christian monk, the original being currently conserved in a museum in Rum." I don't know who drank the rum, or the Scriptural Kool-Aid here, but it is based on a Rudolf Lehnert photo. One supposes the Iranians inserted the Christian monk to get around the proscription.

The saddest image in here (for me) is Frank Fournier's portrait of Omayra Sanchez, taken in Armero, Columbia, in 1985. A volcano erupted: there was a mudslide that killed 24,000 people. Young Omayra was trapped in a collapsed building. There was no crane to lift the heavy metal beams that had trapped her and crushed her legs. Frank Fournier took the photo of her as the world's media filmed her impossible plight and watched her die. His portrait won the World Press Photo prize in 1986. The catalogue notes, "For some, the mediatisation [sic] of Omayra's death was obscene. It illustrates the mercantile spiral in which information is trapped today, the escalation to which it is obliged, between sensationalism and voyeurism." Fournier made the ethical decision to take the picture in the hopes he could raise awareness about the lack of preparedness and denounce the shortcomings of some governments in dealing with disasters which have often been predicted. But the book argues "the commercial aestheticization of suffering and misery" (a charge leveled against Sebastião Salgado) is merely a rephrasing of the artist's attempt to create an aesthetic in their work, to reach the public, which can be seen going back to Dorothea Lange, who was booted out of the FSA for staging her photos of the misery of migrant farmworkers. It posits that true documentary photography has to reject any sense of aesthetics or style in order to be neutral.

The images involved in many famous legal cases are included here: Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ"; Art Rogers' "Puppies" (appropriated by Jeff Koons); the screaming naked Vietnamese girl, photographed by Nick Ut in 1972, her skin scorched by Napalm, can never be forgotten. A news photo of the execution of Kurdish rebels in 1979 won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism, anonymously. The photographer who had been assigned to cover the execution was afraid to come forward. Once the image was spread around the world the Ayatollahs tried to pin it on someone and arrested and shot a soldier who had been present. Two other photographers who lived outside Iran claimed authorship before the true author, Jahangir Razmi, came forward in 2007 to claim his 1980 Pulitzer Prize.

Copyright laws are discussed with (among others) two famous images: Alberto Korda's 1960 portrait of Che Guevara that today is as much an icon as the Shroud of Turin (Secundo Pia's 1898 photo of the latter is also present); and Richard Avedon's "Dovima with Elephants," 1955, which was the subject of a lawsuit in 1991. An individual sold the photo at Sotheby's for almost 20,000 pounds, saying he had received it from a former editor at Harper's Bazaar. Avedon claimed that though he had given the print to Harper's it was understood that they would have the rights to print the image once, and the copyright and the print would remain his property, even if they did not return it. Harper's lawyer claimed that the submission of the photo implied a transfer of ownership and the court agreed with them. (According to Stephen Perloff, editor of The Photograph Collector, Avedon's "Dovima with Elephants" brought $56,250 -- slightly under low estimate -- at Phillips de Pury, New York on October 2, 2012. But "Dovima with Elephants, Evening dress by Dior, Cirque d'Hiver, Paris, August 1955" went to an absentee U.S. dealer for $266,500, at Christie's the same week. Size matters: the second print was jumbo size, we presume.)

What's missing from this collection? There are at least three photos that never made it to the exhibit: First, "Candy Cigarette" by Sally Mann. This is a sweet image of the photographer's 7-year-old daughter holding a sugar cigarette and standing like a sophisticated adult (or maybe it's just her natural poise given that her mother was always taking her picture). The image appears in Immediate Family but caused such a stir and, with the howls of child abuse from the religious right over Mann's nude photos of her children, left such painful memories that Mann no longer wishes to exhibit or discuss this and similar works.

Then there is "The Wedding of the Diors" by Richard Avedon. For a Christian Dior ad campaign Avedon staged a mock celebrity wedding that included a Jackie Onassis lookalike in the shot. Onassis won an injunction against the company for invasion of her privacy by using a lookalike, so the photo cannot be shown, even though it is not Onassis in the picture. As Piker says, "The winner's point of view in court is not necessarily the right one, but his arguments were more convincing."

Also we learn about the case of Thomas Condon of Cincinnati. He had access to a morgue and staged photos of corpses with a snail, an apple and a key. But unlike Joel-Peter Witkin (who also used body parts in his photography), Condon was found guilty of disturbing the dead and sentenced to 18 months in prison and his photographs can never be shown. (A web search confirms this.)

These missing images therefore define the frontiers of what this book is about. The control of imagery has become a power issue in our society. Two big companies, Corbis and Getty, sell reproduction rights to the millions of photos they control. Often a photo that is in the public domain fetches higher prices for reproduction than a recent image because the extant prints are owned by museums or these photo agencies. And "whoever controls images controls minds," said Bill Gates, owner of Corbis.

Other images missing from the show include the work of David Hamilton who refused to participate. But this book called Controversies has created its own controversy. The Swiss edition of the book also showed Gary Gross's notorious bath-tub photo of Brooke Shields as a child from his booklet Little Women. (The image was made even more controversial after another appropriation artist, Richard Prince, mounted it in its own room at the Tate Gallery in London. Scotland Yard got involved and the picture was prohibited from further public view.)

Also missing from the English-language edition is a nude photo of Maud Hewes by Graham Ovenden, which was legally published in New York in 1992, and included in the exhibition. Their exclusion from the American market edition of the catalogue reinforces the fact that though they have been published, these images can still cause a stir for any number of reasons. The Right Wing Nutjobs in the USA love to get outraged over Guess Jeans ads, and we have to ask, Why are they so upset? If obscenity is in the eye of the beholder, they might be better off gouging out their eyes rather than impose their vision on everyone else.

The book is typeset in a pallid condensed sans serif typeface which is unappealing and hard to read, and there is no index. I give the design a B minus, but this is a compelling and important anthology.

(Note: Current print values mentioned are taken from Alex Novak's e-photo newsletter, published by i Photo Central.)
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The Wages Of Sin: $80,000 For Rare Fanny Hill

by Stephen J. Gertz

Fanny Hill must be thrilled. After plying her trade with varying degrees of success she now commands $54,000-$80,000 to spend an intimate evening with her. Reading a scarce, true first edition copy of her memoirs, that is.

On Tuesday, October 30, 2012, Christie's-Paris is offering an excellent copy of the rare, two volume (here bound as one) true first edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, John Cleland's oft reprinted 1749 book that is the classic and most important erotic novel in English. It is estimated to sell for €40,000-€60,000 ($54,000-$80,000). [UPDATE 10/31/2012: Sold for $148,878, incl. premium].

"Cleland [1710-1789] composed his novel while serving a sentence for debt in the Fleet Prison. According to his own testimony, it was written largely from boredom and, the early chapters anyway, was based on an idea '...originally given me by a young gentleman of the greatest hopes I ever knew, above eighteen years ago, on an occasion immaterial to mention here.' Volume one appeared about November 1748, and volume two was published in early February of the following year. Both were printed by Thomas Parker for Ralph Griffiths and advertised in the press at three shillings each volume.

"In November 1749, a warrant was issued for the persons responsible for the book and by the end of the month, Cleland, Griffiths, and Parker...were all on bail and awaiting trial" (Kearney, A History of Erotic Literature, p. 66). Bookseller and publisher Ralph Griffiths blamed everything on his brother, Fenton Griffiths, whose inverted name, G. Fenton, was used for the book's false imprint. As  this brother did not, apparently, exist he was a convenient fall-guy.

During this period, Cleland, at the suggestion of Ralph Griffiths, excised the majority of the offensive material - of which there was plenty - and in 1750 this abridged edition was published under the title Memoirs of Fanny Hill. "The expurgated version seems not to have found any more favour than the complete first edition for it was suppressed very quickly" (ibid). As a result the self-censored 1750 edition is even rarer than the complete first, with only one copy, in the British Library (call # C.133.a.9), known to have survived its ban.

Despite arrests and the prospect of trial, however, the cases against Cleland et al were not, apparently, pursued.

The book's plotline became a enduring cliché rehashed in countless erotic novels that followed (but not Sade's!) in English and French: Innocent country girl goes to the city and must prostitute herself to survive, with ups and downs, and happily ever after with a nobleman who knows her past and forgives.

The bibliographical history of this book is quite convoluted and it was not until David Foxon's essay in his Libertine Literature in England (1965), reprinted from The Book Collector (Autumn 1963), that the various editions - four prime suspects - were sorted out and the true first ID'd.

Foxon's description of the true first:

"Oval woodcut ornament on title-page. Date as 'M.DCC.XLIX.' 12mo: A-I12, K6, A-K12, L6, M2. Pp. [1-3] 4-227 [228 blank]; [1-3] 4-255 [256 blank]. 25 lines of type per page except vol. I, pp. 194-227 which are set unleaded, giving 29 lines. Headlines: Memoirs of a / Woman of Pleasure. With a sodomitical description in vol II, pp. 177-9."

Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was illegal in the United States until the Supreme Court's obscenity decision of 1964 cleared it for open publication. The first legit edition was published in 1965 by G.P. Putnam's Sons in New York but it does not contain the two-paragraphs in volume two  of the true first describing a homosexual encounter, the infamous "sodomitical" tableau. That scene was excised from all subsequent 18th and 19th century editions and did not reappear until Maurice Girodias, under his deceased father, Jack Kahane's, Obelisk Press imprint, published Memoirs of Fanny Hill in 1950 and included it.

The true  first edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure consisted of only 750 copies which sold for six shillings (2 vols x 3s). Its maximum profit could not have been more than £100. Cleland is said to have received a grand total of £20.

He wrote it out of boredom while in debtor's prison, not out of any sense of literary calling or art. but, rather, for a quick buck.

"One of those booksellers who disgrace the profession offered him a temporary relief for writing the work above alluded to, which brought stigma on his name, which time has not obliterated, and which will be consigned to his memory whilst its poisonous contents are in circulation" (John Nichols, The Gentleman's Magazine, February 1789, p. 180).

It may be said that Cleland, like his comely creation, Fanny Hill, was a whore, and a cheap one, too. The £20 Cleland earned was a pittance compared to the £840 he owed. Yet "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money," as Samuel Johnson famously said. Poverty tends to focus a writer's attention.

Cleland was "a man who would have been merely another minor 18th-century literary figure had it not been that the shortage of a bob or two had forced him to write a sensational novel" (op cit,  Kearney).

A sensational novel that, in its true first edition, now fetches a sensational price.
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CLELAND, John. Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. London: Printed [by Thomas Parker] for G. Fenton [bookseller Fenton Griffiths, i.e. Ralph Griffiths] in the Strand, 1749 [1748-49]. Two parts bound in one twelvemo volume (163 x 98 mm).  227, 255 pp. Woodcut vignette to title page and end of Part II.

Kearney, Patrick J., The Private Case 415. Pia 846. Foxon, Libertine Literature in England, pp. 52-63. Cf. Ashby III, p. 60. Cf. Kearney, A History of Erotic Literature, pp. 66-71.

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Image courtesy of Christie's, with our thanks.

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The First American Sex Manual

by Stephen J. Gertz

First American edition, London [Boston]: 1766.

It's not a Kama Sutra for the Colonies;  coital postures are nowhere to be found nor Vedic wisdom on "sucking a mango fruit."  Nor is it The Joy of Early American Sex by Proctor Alex Comfort, though the joy of connubial relations within the conjugal bed is not ignored. And, for the record, an ancient Greek philosopher had nothing to do with it.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was, nonetheless, the first guide to sexual relations, pregnancy, and childbirth published in America - in Boston, yet, that hotbed of Colonial steam and agitation - in 1766 by Zechariah Feeling, i,e. Zechariah Fowle, with whom famed early American printer Isaiah Thomas apprenticed and, later, partnered. Three years after The Seven Years War ended, Americans were ready and anxious to read about the facts of life. But, beyond basic  (if somewhat inaccurate) sexual anatomy, there weren't many facts. Folklore, superstition, and old wive's tales form the basis of instruction.

Part I, Chapter 1: A particular description of the parts or instruments of generation, both in men and women.

"The organ of generation in man, nature has placed obvious to the sight, and it is called the Yard, and because hanging without the belly, is called the Penis a Pendendo...

"The next thing is the Clytoris, which is a sinewy and hard part of the womb, replete with spongy and black matter wihin, in the same manner as the side ligaments of the yard: and indeed resembles it in form, suffers erection and falling in the same manner, and it both stirs up lust, and gives delight in copulation: for without this, the fair sex neither desire mutual embraces, nor have pleasure in them. nor conceive by them: and according to the greatness or smallness of this part, they are more or less fond of men's embraces; so that it may properly be stiled the seat of lust."

Chapter II: Of the restriction laid upon men in the use of carnal copulation, by the institution of marriage; with the advantage it brings to mankind; and the proper time for it.

"...the holy Jesus has told us, That in the beginning it was so; the marriage of one man to one woman: so that as these conjugal delights cannot be enjoyed but in a married state...And it is in the breaking of this order that has filled the world wiith confusion and debauchery, has brought diseases on the body, consumptions on estates, and eternal ruin to the soul, if not repented of. Let therefore either sex, that have a desire to enjoy the delights of mutual embraces, take care that they do it in a married state with their own wives or husbands, or else it will become a curse to them instead of a blessing...

"The inclinations of virgins to marriage, is to be known by divers symtoms; for when they arrive to ripe-age, which is about fourteen of fifteen, their natural purgations begin to flow, and then the blood...does, by its abundance, stir up their minds to venery; to which external causes may excite them; for their spirits are brisk and inflamed when they arrive at this age, and their bodies are often more heated by their eating sharp and salt things, and by spices, by which their desire of venereal embraces becomes very great, at some critical junctures almost insuperable. And the use of those so much desired enjoyments being denied to virgins, it is often followed by very dangerous, and sometimes dismal consequences, precipitating them into those follies that may bring an indelible stain upon their families, or else it brings upon them the greensickness or other diseases. But when they are married, and those desires satisfied by their husbands, thise distempers vanish...And this strong inclination of theirs may be known by their eager gazing at men, and affecting their company, which sufficiently demonstrates that nature prompts them to desire coition. Nor is this the case of virgins only, but the same may be observed in young brisk widows, who cannot be satisfied without due benevolence paid them."

Chapter III: Of virginity, what it is, how it may be known, by what means it may be lost, and how a person may know that it is so.

"Virginity untouched and taintless, is the boast and pride of the fair sex, but they generally commend  to put it off; for as good as it is, they care not how soon they are honestly rid of it. And I think they are right; for if they keep it too long, it grows useless, or at least loses much of its value, a stale virgin (if such a thing there be) being looked upon like an old almanack out of date."

Part II, Chapter I:  What conception is; what is pre-requisite thereto; how a woman may know whether she has conceived, and whether a boy or girl.

Here Aristotle describes how, in order to conceive, the minds of of men and women should be free of care and business and bad thoughts: "All such things are enemies of Venus. And let their animal and vital spirits be powerfully exhilirated by some brisk  and generous restoratives; and let them to invigorate their fancies, survey the lovely beauties of each other, and bear the bright ideas of them in their minds: and if it happens, that instead of beauty, there is any thing that looks like imperfection or deformity (for nature is not alike bountiful to all) let them be covered over with a veil of oblivion."

The consequences of bearing bad thoughts or gazing upon anything less than pleasing to the eye during coitus are dire: this is how children are conceived as physical monsters and born grossly deformed, as illustrated by the woodcuts of such and the stories of these misbegotten children.

Men are advised not to abruptly end the festivities. "When the bridegroom has done what nature has promted him to do he ought to take heed of withdrawing too suddenly out of the field of love lest he should, by so doing, make way for cold to strike into the womb."

As far as determining the sex of the unborn, if a woman feels the child on the right side, it is a boy; on the left, a girl.

Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is an old warhorse. Published in various versions in England and America, with roots dating back to 1507, it was so popular that the last recorded edition appeared as late as 1883.

"The 'medical' work most frequently reprinted in America during the eighteenth and and early nineteenth centuries, Aristotle's work was also the first popular sex manual in the English language and for advice relied upon occult and folk traditions. Austin records twenty-seven editions published in this country before 1821" (American Antiquarian Society, A Society's Chief Joy [1969]).

Though openly published, Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece was not openly sold nor were its publishers anxious to be transparently associated with it.

"It is not at all surprising that our first popular treatise on gynecology and obstetrics should have led a shy and furtive existence, In spite of the fact that such topics were as interesting then as now, the eighteenth and early nineteenth century Americans frowned on the popular dissemination of information regarding the facts of life...There was, however, one group of treatises which had considerable popularity for a century and a quarter but which little is known and seldom met with today...Almost none of its early publishers had the hardihood to print their names on the title pages and some of them used an entirely fictitious imprint...The most popular of these early tracts was 'Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece'...illustrated with crude woodcuts, informative but with little anatomical accuracy.. The text is an amusing mixture of sensible advice, pious admonition, ribald verse, popular superstition and very little medical knowledge. That they were both interesting and useful in their day, we cannot doubt, that they played an important part in the development of our growing country, we may be sure" (Vail, What a Young Puritan Ought To Know, American Antiquarian Society Librarian's Report, 1939, pp. 22-29).

Major variations in text, content, and arrangement exist amongst the many English and American editions (OCLC records 176); publishers appear to have added material, edited, or rewritten text at their whim. An early London edition, for instance, includes a section titled, A Private Looking-Glass for the Female Sex. This part was excised in later editions and replaced with A Treasure of Health or The Family Physician. I suspect the reason being that by mating the sex manual with an instructional on home health and remedies for common maladies the book would be considered more a medical text and thus  acceptable.

Who wrote it? It appears that William Salmon (1644-1713), the English quack and self-styled "Professor of Physik" is responsible for the seventeenth century editions upon which all subsequent ones were based.

This, the [Boston] 1766 edition is extremely scarce, with only three extant copies recorded: at the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, and one that recently blew into the marketplace offered by Howard S. Mott Inc of Sheffield, Massachusetts - and immediately flew out. It sold for $12,500.

Yet the first American edition of Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece is priceless, if not in commercial value, then certainly as the  earliest book on sexuality published in pre-Revolutionary America, for its insight into contemporary attitudes, and as the most popular tract on the subject in America for 100 years afterward.

"The Effigies of a Maid all Hairy, and an Infant that was Black,
by the Imagination of their Parents."

The book was, in its way, hot stuff, "sold under the counter or by peddlers...the illustrations were prurient, and in fact demonstrate how images cause abnormal sexual arousal. They show monsters conceived while their parents were looking at pictures - in the case of the hairy woman...By the same token the sight of a naked woman inspires Aristotle to write, and since this was the only illustration of a naked woman printed in colonial America [see above], grotesque as it is, it surely aroused many a young man" (Green and Wilson, From the Bottom Up: Popular Reading and Writing in the Michael Zinman Collection of Early American Imprints. Library Company of Philadelphia, 2004, p. 18).

Here, then, is evidence of the first  nude centerfold in an American publication, 187 years before Hugh Hefner presented Marilyn Monroe as Miss December, 1953, in Playboy #1:

Likes: Natural Philosophy, Botany, Politiks, Musik, good Bookes.
Favorite Pastimes: Long walks on the beach at sunset with my companion, Fanny, and drives up the Pacific Coast Highway by coach with my father.
Education: I'm studying sewing, cooking, and domestic management at Miss Fowlmouth's Finishing School for Young Ladies.
Favorite Quote: "The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still" (Mr. Pope). 
Heart's Desire: A good manse with stately yard.

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[SALMON, William, et al]. Aristotle's Complete Master-Piece, in three parts; displaying the secrets of nature in the generation of Man. Regularly digested into chapters and sections...To which is added, A Treasure of Heath, of  the Family Physician: being choice and approved Remedies for all the several Distempers incident to Human Bodies. The Thirteenth edition. London [i.e. Boston]: Printed and Sold for Zechariah Feeling [Zechariah Fowle], 1766. Octavo. viii, [9]-140 pp.

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All images reproduced by license from the American Antiquarian Society, with our thanks.A special thank you to the AAS staff for their assistance.

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