Bookleggers and Smuthounds

by Gertzman, Jay A.

• ISBN13: 9780812234930
• ISBN10: 0812234936
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

This first examination of the trade in erotica during the 1920s and '30s provides an understanding of the evolution of both obscenity law and sexual explicitness in literature, and raises fascinating questions about moral control, idealism, and the marketplace in ways that continue to resonate today. "[An] absorbing account of an often overlooked corner of American publishing history."--

Author Biography

Jay A. Gertzman is Professor of English at Mansfield University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(14)
Traders in Prurience: Pariah Capitalists and Moral Entrepreneurs	15	(34)
``Sex O'Clock in America'': Who Bought What, Where, How, and Why	49	(54)
``Hardworking American Daddy'': John Saxton Sumner and the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice	103	(32)
``Fifth Avenue Has No More Rights Than the Bowery'': Taste and Class in Obscenity Legislation	135	(44)
``Your Casanova Is Unmailable'': Mail-Order Erotica and Postal Service Guardians of Public Morals	179	(40)
The Two Worlds of Samuel Roth: Man of Letters and Entrepreneur of Erotica	219	(64)
Epilogue	283	(26)
Notes	309	(72)
Selected Bibliography	381	(16)
Acknowledgments	397	(4)
Index	401