Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 [Paperback]

Jay A. Gertzman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 30, 2001

Between the two world wars, at a time when both sexual repression and sexual curiosity were commonplace, New York was the center of the erotic literature trade in America. The market was large and contested, encompassing not just what might today be considered pornographic material but also sexually explicit fiction of authors such as James Joyce, Theodore Dreiser, and D.H. Lawrence; mail-order manuals; pulp romances; and "little dirty comics."

Bookleggers and Smuthounds vividly brings to life this significant chapter in American publishing history, revealing the subtle, symbiotic relationship between the publishers of erotica and the moralists who attached them—and how the existence of both groups depended on the enduring appeal of prurience. By keeping intact the association of sex with obscenity and shameful silence, distributors of erotica simultaneously provided the antivice crusaders with a public enemy.

Jay Gertzman offers unforgettable portrayals of the "pariah capitalists" who shaped the industry, and of the individuals, organizations, and government agencies that sought to control them. Among the most compelling personalities we meet are the notorious publisher Samuel Roth, "the Prometheus of the Unprintable," and his nemesis, John Sumner, head of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, a man aggressive in his pursuit of pornographers and in his quest for a morally united—and ethnically homogeneous—America.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[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."—The 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

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (September 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812217985
• ISBN-13: 978-0812217988
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,594,059 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An entertaining history of publishing & censorship, August 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (Hardcover)

This is a very readable, entertaining and well researched study of a period of American book publishing equivalent to the previous century's "Wild West". There are the "bad guys" (the censors) and the "good guys" (the authors and publishers and free speech attorneys) and all are presented as the idiocyncratic characters that they were. There is also an explanation of the whole social mileu that created the battlefield in which this struggle for the freedom to read took place. A great deal of previously unpublished bibliographic material about American erotica is presented, and the footnotes, set at the end of the book to be non-intrusive, contain additional wealths of information for the scholar and academic. The text is enhanced by many vintage illustrations and photographs, often gleaned from private collections.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Story of the Jewish Presence in the Eroticia Bus, December 10, 1999

By 

Adele Greenberg (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (Hardcover)

The author tackles the question of why people who distributed books which were banned or critized as pornography were often Jewish. He has done his homework, digging up prominent examples, and makes comparisons between the other kinds of dirty jobs immigrants and their sons did, and the publishing and selling of smut. Sometimes, this "smut" was great literature; sometimes it was just plain curious and brought in good money during the depression. You get to know some of these men pretty well. You do not like them much, maybe, but you do understand. The author does a good job of explaining the career of the most famous of these publishers, a very complex and haunted man you diskike, but feel sorry for too.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Erotica and Censorship, May 24, 2001

By 

Joseph Slade (Athens, Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940 (Hardcover)

This is a wonderfully conceived and splendidly executed history of the most important formative period of American erotica. Here, thanks to Gertzman's scholarship, the reader will find information available nowhere else: on marginal publishers and sexy books, and on the police and officials who tried to suppress them. The book chronicles investigations and campaigns by assorted smuthunters such as the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the Post Office, ambitious district attorneys, and the FBI. Gertzman breaks out the huge volume of erotica from underground presses into useful categories, and discusses each in detail, having drawn on neglected archives and hard-to-find resources. For all its careful scholarship, the book is a fine read. The discussion of Samuel Roth, perhaps the most notorious of all American pornographers, is itself worth the price of the book, because it allows Gertzman to speculate on the essential value of pornographers to a culture.