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.

__________

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.

__

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. 
__________

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.

__________

Image of My Sister and I advertisement courtesy of Mr. Gertzman's website, with our thanks.
__________
__________

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.

__________

[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.

__________

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

__________
__________

The Original Guide To Health and Wellness, From Iraq

By Stephen J. Gertz

In 1531, the first printed edition of what had originally been an eleventh century Arabic guide to good health was published.

Purification [enema].

The book, Tacuini Sanitatis (Tables of Health, i.e. Health Maintenance), in Latin, had been circulating in manuscript copies during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, providing encyclopedic counsel on health, hygiene, and well-being.

Constipation. Sexual Intercourse. Sperm.

Originally written by ibn Butlan, a Christian physician born in Baghdad (d. 1068) also known as Elluchasem Elimithar, the book lays out the six elements necessary for good health and avoiding stress: food and drink; air and climate; activity and rest; sleep and wakefulness, the secretion and excretion of humors; and states of mind, i.e. the emotions. Illness, according to ibn Butlan, was the result of an imbalance of these elements. A life lived in harmony with nature was the cure for what ailed you.

Health Building. Drunkenness.  Fires.

Sexual activity was considered an essential part of a well-balanced life, and ibn Butlan offers advice, i.e. eating the eyes of animals will increase sperm count (though nausea is noted as a potential side effect).

 

The healing properties of various plants are listed. Onions, for example, will soften the character, act as a diuretic, facilitate sexual intercourse, and sharpen vision. The abuse of lettuce, however, is harmful to sexual activity. Beyond over-consumption, however, it is not clear what constitutes abuse of lettuce,  though extreme foodies may consider anything more than a splash of balsamic vinegar to be a capital offense leading to depressed libido, if not appetite.

Drunkenness. Vomiting.

The book, known as Taqwim al-Sihha in Arabic, was first translated into Latin, 1258-1266, by order of Manfred, King of Sicily. Illustrated manuscript editions began to appear in the late fourteenth century. The first printed edition was published in Strasbourg in 1531 bearing woodcuts that, in many cases, are models of candor, matter-of-factly depicting the honest realities of our basic animal functions and activities.

Radish. Sleep. Conversation.

Tacuini Sanitatis was, until the seventeenth century brought rationalism to the study of science and medicine, the most popular guide to health and wellness among the European lay readership.

To speak in form. Vigilance.

Though fairly represented in library holdings worldwide the book is scarce in the marketplace, with only two copies coming to auction within the last thirty-seven years. The most recent, a complete copy in a modern binding by Sangorski & Sutcliffe, sold at Sotheby's May 7, 2009 for £11,000 ($17,710).

A defective copy, disbound and lacking the final two signatures, is being offered at Bloomsbury-London's Antiquarian Books: The Property of a Collector, Part I, sale Wednesday, April 4, 2012, lot 343. It is estimated to sell for £1000 - £1500 ($1600 - $2400). 

__________

ELIMITHAR (Elluchasem) aka Ibn Butlan, Abul Hasan al Muchtar ibn Botlan - Abu Ali Yahya ibn Isa ibn Guzlah al Baghdadi. Tacuini Sanitatis. Elluchasem Elimithar medici de Baldath, de sex rebus non naturalibus, earum naturis, operationibus, & rectificationibus, publico omnium usui, conseruandæ sanitatis, recens exarati. : Albengnefit De uirtutibus medicinarum, & ciborum. Iac. Alkindus De rerum gradibus. Argentorati (Strasbourg): Apud Ioannem Schottum Librarium, 1531.

Editio princeps. Folio. 163, [9] pp. Title page and text in red and black. Woodcut panel strips at foot of leaves.

Adams I11. Wellcome I, 1996. BL German Books, p. 365. Durling 2520 & 4774. Heirs to Hippocrates 69. Vicaire 323. Waller 2740.

__________

Images courtesy of Bloomsbury, with our thanks.
__________
__________

Sacher-Masoch Complains About Suffering

by Stephen J. Gertz

 

On the sixteenth of February, 1887, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the journalist and author whose  novel, Venus In Furs (1870), provided the first literary documentation of female sexual domination, male subjugation, and the erotic joy of of pain and suffering, wrote a letter to his friend, French novelist Alphonse Daudet.

The year before, in 1886, the first edition of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis appeared. In this classic text on sexual psychopathology, Krafft-Ebing coined the term "masochism" to describe the behavior of those who are sexually aroused by pain and suffering. Sacher-Masoch thus became the first person in history to have a sexual variation named after him while still alive and published in a major book for all to read. 

And you think Facebook is fast and loose with your personal life.

So it is was with great, if unintended, mordant humor that Sacher-Masoch opened this letter to Daudet with the following:

“Still suffering ["toujours souffrant”], I could not come to the opening of Nuima Roumestan but send you my congratulations today...” 

And thus another entry into the Annals of Irony.

That said, if a masochist stubs their toe, it's not pleasant at all; it hurts like hell. It only hurts like heaven if the master or mistress commands the toe be stubbed, then sharply squeezes it afterward for loving emphasis. 

In all probability, Leopold was ill when he wrote this note. But still, if you have an eye for autograph material that  winks and makes your brain smile while appealing to your literary libido items rarely get cooler than this.

__________

SACHER-MASOCH, Léopold von. Autograph Note, signed (“Sacher-Masoch”), to Alphonse Daudet. One page, in ink, on small blue “télégramme” form, addressed on the verso by Daudet. 12mo, Paris: 16 fevrier 1887.

__________

Image courtesy of James Cummins Bookseller, who is currently offering this signed autograph letter, with our thanks.

__________

__________

Dancing With the Stars in Hell!

This week, Sue Benny, a big-rig driver from Three Way, Arizona, gets terpsicorian with Old Scratch; Valerie City, a yoga instructor from Intercourse, PA, skips a light fandango in lotus position with Baal; Duke Lozier, an urologist  from Fort Dick, CA, trips the light fantastic with dance-floor poison, Lucrezia Borgia; and Tailor Buoy, a seamster/old salt from Climax, CO, tries to keep his head after receiving seven veiled threats from his partner, Salomé.

It's Disco Inferno Night! Burn, baby, burn!

How did things come to this pas-de-diable? How did we get

FAULKNER, Thomas A. From Ballroom To Hell.
Chicago: The Henry Publishing Company, 1892.

Slash with me through the mists of time with Mr. Peabody's WABAC machete to 1581 when a strange little screed appeared on the scene that, while not the first such, is amongst the modern world's earliest prospective salutes to Studio 54, Dionysus, and depravity:

A Treatise of daunses, wherin it is shewed, that they are as it were accessories and depedants (or thinges annexed) to whoredome: where also by the way is touched and proved, that playes are joyned and knit together in a rancke or rowe with them. 1581; and of A godly exhortation by occasion of the late iudgement of God shewed at Parris-garden, the thirteenth day of Ianvarie ... by Iohn Field.((London, Printed by R. Walde-graue, for H. Carre, 1581. STC 10845).

Anti-dance sentiment dates back as far as the fourth century when St. Gregory advised Emperor Julian, the last Roman emperor to take an official stand against Christianity, that dance was okey-dokey if done in honor of God, but not when it mirrored the dissolute movements of the pagans. While early Christian fathers allowed dancing for sacred rituals, things began to get out of hand when the hands of men and women began to touch.

"The hierarchy of the Church warned that holy rites were corrupted by the inclusion of women who tempted male participants into licentious behavior. Matters were further complicated because early church members believed that because humans were created in the image of God, the devil was frightened away by the naked human body. In the midst of the dance, therefore, celebrants often ripped off their clothes. Church leaders grew increasingly concerned about the number of religious rituals that were deteriorating into sexual orgies" (Knowles, Mark. The Wicked Waltz and Other Scandalous Dances, p. 3).

In short, when the physical nature of dance overshadowed its spiritual element it spelled damnation. Dancing was allowed - the third Council of Toledo ordered St. Isidore, the sixth-century Archbishop of Seville, to create choreographies for certain council events - but be careful.

The introduction of medieval dance music and the social dance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries created anxiety for the Church but it could not buck popular sentiment. Dance manuals began to appear through the fifteenth century, and by the sixteenth century the tension between the social and religious began to manifest itself with books like A Treatise of Daunces.

The seventeenth century struck up the band in 1606 with Jean Boiseul's Traitte contre les dances.

BOISEUL, Jean. Traitte contre les danses.
A la Rochelle: Les heritiers de Hierosme Havltin, 1606.

An early anti-dance treatise, this jolly manual provides a foundation for arguments that continued to the end of the nineteenth century, to wit, that dancing is a sin against God. Boiseul provides biblical chapter and verse, acknowledging that dance is mentioned in the Bible, yet he  points out that the dances were "joyous and spontaneous" and very different from the seventeenth-century social dances of his day: the courante, branle, and galliard are specifically attacked. Boiseul is particularly incensed by the dances of non-Christian "savages." From the minuet to Mephistopheles is just a bow and curtsy away, the bop in the bop-shu-bop-shu-bop, and foreplay to fornication.

GAUTHIER, François Louis (1696-1780).
Traité contre les danses et les mauvaises chansons...
Paris: chez Antoine Boudet, 1769.
Image courtesy of Michael R. Thompson Booksellers.

Fast-forward to 1769, and François Louis Gauthier writes not only against dancing but of  mauvaises chansons (bad songs) that have a dire effect on morality:

Traité contre less danses et mauvaises chansons dans lequel le danger & le mal qui y sont renfermés sont démontrés par les témoignages multipliés des Saintes Ecritures, des ss. pp. des conciles, de plusieurs evêques du siécle passé & du nôtre, d'un nombre de théologiens moraux & de casuistes, de jurisconsultes, de plusieurs ministres protestans, & enfin des paiens même [Treatise against the dance and bad songs in which the danger and evil contained therein are shown multiplied by the testimony of Scripture, the SS. pp. councils, several bishops of the past century and of ours, a number of moral theologians and casuistry, of lawyers, several protestant ministers, and finally even the Gentiles].

Gauthier would have a conniption fit if he heard the current Billboard Top Ten; he'd gag on Lady Gaga.

A Solemn Warning to Dancers.
New York : Published by N. Bangs and J. Emory
for the Tract Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church,, c.1824-1832.

But it is when Victoria ascends to the British monarchy in the nineteenth century that hell breaks loose. And when Victorian attitudes about social conduct and sexual morality met the fundamentalist strains of American Protestantism, they begat a slew of anti-dance tracts, particularly as social dances began to assume a  physical nature that raised questions and eyebrows, those eyebrows wiggling into leering overdrive ala Groucho Marx in the last quarter of the 19th through the first decades of the 20th centuries. The music was getting too wild, couples were getting too close, the movements too suggestive, and the dances too much...fun!

GARDNER, Rev. W.W. Modern Dancing: In Light of Scripture and Facts.
Louisville, KY: Baptist Book Concern, 1893.

DAVIS, Rev. George. An Account of the Trial of Social Dance.
Rondout, N.Y.: Kingston Freeman Printing House, 1899.

Rev. George Davis, a pastor of the Reformed Churches of Marbletown and North Marbletown as well as a lawyer, takes a novel approach in preaching his anti-dance position with An Account of the Trial of the Social Dance (1899). The jury for this trial is composed of The Public Conscience. Witnesses include Mr. Worldly Fun, Mr. Roman Catholic Bishop, Mr. Round Dancing Master, and Miss Chicago Barmaid. The trial proceeds and, in Davis' summary, the jury's verdict against the defendant, social dance, is GUILTY! You won't be seeing this procedural on Law & Order anytime soon.

Beryl and Assoc. (eds.). The Immorality of Modern Dances.
New York: Everitt and Frances Co., and F. McLean and Co., 1904.

In 1904, Beryl and Associates presented The Immorality of  Modern Dances, declaring  that "The vice of modern dancing has become so prevalent in all classes of society that it has begun to be looked upon as good form to dance on all possible occasions. To extirpate this vice will require not only the utmost exertion, but first the united power of those specially chosen by Divine Providence to watch over the flock of Christ to protect it, to defend it from all evil, and, as good shepherds, to lead it to God in holiness after the example of Jesus, who said, 'I am the good Shepherd' (John x. 2); secondly the united power of the laity.

"How, then, are the true shepherds of Christ's flock to be united in strong battle array against a vice which is causing such havoc in the flock? In a battle which, to many of them, seems to have but one end--their utter rout. They recognize the havoc caused by modern dancing to the souls of their flock, but they seem powerless to suppress the evil. They know full well that many men and women who pose as pillars of the church are at times very much interested in clubs and societies which give dances, and that to speak against dancing would cause them to be unpopular and would lessen their collections; and, rather than endure either the unpopularity or the decreased receipts, they allow their parishioners to dance wherever and whenever they see fit. Such pastors are cowards. They lack the courage of their convictions. They are not true shepherds, but are self-interested hirelings; and no wonder that the wolf of the Saturday night dance snatches and scatters the sheep which should be in their pews on Sundays, but are not" (The Immorality of Modern Dances, pp. 11-12).

Saturday Night Fever indeed; John Travolta/Tony Manero as Beelzebub's best bud and Brooklyn's favorite fallen angel.

LYTLE, H.W. & John Dillon. From Dance Hall to White Slavery.
The World's Greatest Tragedy.
Chicago: Charles C. Thompson, 1912.

No comment necessary on From Dance Hall to White Slavery. Ten-cents a dance, anyone? Half-and-Half and Around-the-World, extra. If she had only known...

KOVEN BOWEN de, Louise. The Public Dance Halls of Chicago.
Chicago: The Juvenile Protective Association of Chicago, 1917.

The Public Dance Halls of Chicago is a revised edition of a work based on an investigation done in 1910 regarding the conditions of public dance halls in Chicago. The authoress complains about the late hours, liquor, and the low behavior of males noting, "... men wear their hats; they all smoke and expectorate freely." Koven Bowen  accuses waiters and other dance hall employees of providing information on the location of "disreputable lodging houses." Finally, she delivers a condemnation against masquerade and fancy dress balls because many women are found "attending in male attire." Oh-oh.  Look out below!

We know what this will lead to...

...And this.

Don't get me started...

Arthur Murray meets the Kama Sutra, c. 1952.

The magic of the mambo: Less touch, mas pasión.

It takes two to tango and, ahem, etc.

That social dancing since the 1920s has become a ritual of symbolic sexual activity is now a given; it is just too overt to ignore. Yet it is accepted by all but the most orthodox in their religious beliefs.

Anti-dance literature has faded from view and when media now portray anti-dance sentiment it is in movies in opposition to narrow fundamentalism, i.e. Footloose. Let the kids kick up their heels, it won't kill 'em.

And, of course, in the apotheosis of anti- anti-dance stories, Dirty Dancing, the tale of an impressionable ingenue who meets a slick but sincere Catskills resort dance instructor, is liberated, and then, after the credits have rolled and the stage is struck, gets a rhinoplasty that ends her career as an actress. The moral: Circumcise your ethnic nose at your eternal peril, girls; Yahweh is watching.

But the old and rare literature against dancing remains rich and collectible, and while we can laugh at the dire predictions espoused in it we cannot deny that the warnings were not without merit and that the Cassandras were correct. We're all headed to hell in a handbasket. Let's dance!

Which brings us up to date and anxiously awaiting the judges' decision.

And tonight's winner is...Tailor Buoy and Salomé! Head's up, Tailor!

Illustration for Oscar Wilde's Salomé by Aubrey Beardsley.

Whoops!

And so ends another episode of Dancing With the Stars in Hell. Roll credits:



__________

For an interesting look at anti-dance literature see the Library of Congress's An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals 1490-1920 overview.
__________
__________

Lewd and Scandalous Exhibition At Monash University

"Exposés of London prostitution and vice took readers on a tour 
of London’s clubs and nightspots and invited them to enjoy 
(but condemn!) the ‘fashion and folly’ of London citizens."

"Monash University is a child of the Sixties. The University Library began with progressive policies on collection development, just as the University established itself in opposition to the stuffy respectability of Australia's sandstone universities by teaching modern American literature alongside Latin, Law and Medicine.

"One telling reminder of the Libraries idealistic youth is the run of Playboy magazine held in the Rare Books Collection..." (Dr. Patrick Spedding, Lecturer in English Literature and Deputy Director of the Centre for the Book, Monash University).

From: An improved system of midwifery, adapted to the reformed practice

of medicine: illustrated by numerous plates …  by W. Beach 

Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, Keys & Co., 1859.

Note the extremely unusual medico-erotica composition.

But if a full run of Playboy doesn't remind you, the latest exhibition at Monash University Library in Melbourne, Australia will definitely jog your memory. Like a conk on the noggin.

From: Les bijoux indiscrets. Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1772, 

Denis Diderot's 1748 tale of a vocal pudendum.

Lewd and Scandalous Books, which opened on July 14, 2010 and runs through September 30, 2010, is exhibited in conjunction with To Deprave and Corrupt: Forbidden, Hidden, and Censored Books presented by the 2010 Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Conference.

From: Complete Works of Gaius Petronius done into English by Jack Lindsay 
with One Hundred Illustrations by Norman Lindsay.

London: Fanfrolico Press, 1927.

It appears as if Monash's Matheson Library and the Bibliographical Society are in cahoots with these salutes to Australia's heritage as a colony of outlaws and proud to dare the blue noses - though in this context blue nose might connote one who has their proboscis stuck in an erotic novel.

From: The Poetical Works of the Earls of Rochester, Roscomon 
and Dorset, the Dukes of Devonshire, Buckinghamshire, etc.: 
with memoirs of their lives (London: 1739).

  

Monash has set up an excellent virtual tour of the exhibition featuring all 113 books on display with notes by Dr. Spedding. It is well worth taking a few minutes to visit; it's the next best thing to being there.

Patrick Spedding publishes a fascinating blog concerning his scholarship in the farther shores of literature, and writes about developing and curating the exhibition here.

Considering yesterday's post, I would be remiss if I didn't include another of the books present in Lewd and Scandalous.

And what exhibition of erotica would be complete without:

La nymphomanie, ou traité de la fureur utérine …
par M. D. T. de Bienville, Nouv. Ed. 
Amsterdam: Marc-Michel Rey, 1778.

The Case of the Furious Uterus
or, This Cruel Malady.

__________

Images courtesy of Matheson Library.

__________

__________