Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Traders in Prurience: Pariah Capitalists and Moral Entrepreneurs
2. "Sex O'clock in America": Who Bought What, Where, How, and Why
3. "Hardworking American Daddy": John Saxton Sumner and the New Society for the of Vice
4. "Fifth Avenue Has No More Rights than the Bowery": Taste and Class in Obscenity Legislation
5. "Your Casanova Is Unmailable'': Mail-Order Erotica and Postal Service Guardians of Public Morals
6. The Two Worlds of Samuel Roth: Man of Letters and Entrepreneur of
7. Erotica
8. Epilogue

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

Promotional Information

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.

About the Author

Jay A. Gertzman is Professor Emeritus of English at Mansfield University and has been actively involved with the National Coalition Against Censorship based in New York.

Reviews

"[An] absorbing account of an often overlooked corner of American publishing history."—Publishers Weekly

"Gertzman's book is important; it opens a new topic of study and establishes groundwork for debate."—Journal of American History

"A major work of scholarship."—AB Bookman's

"A detailed and fascinating study."—The Library

"This excellent study deserves to be ready by any lawyer and jurist. . . . It raises profound questions, which still haunt the legal scene."—New York Law Journal