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Non-Fiction of Gay Interest
Content: "'What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another' wrote D H Lawrence in his essay 'Pornography and Obscenity' and the contention is borne out in this historical survey of the subject from Old Testament times until today. The author believes that such a survey is justified by the interesting light that this kind of writing, however, crude and unsophisticated, can throw on social habits and customs. The field is wide, ranging from the completely uninhibited writing of the classical Greeks about the hetaerai to the vast flood of obscene books that were the inevitable reaction to the prudery of the Victorian era. Today the obscenity business is worth nearly $1,000 million a year in the United States alone. "In his concluding chapter Montgomery Hyde throws light on the changing attitudes of authority towards pornography. Until the Obscene Publications Act of 1857, few prosecutions were brought against obscene publications per se; only those offending the existing authorities were prosecuted. Similarly the Roman Catholic Church, probably the most powerful censor in history, put the Decameron on the Index because of its satirizing of the Church and not because of its pornographic passages. In the recent past some remarkable prosecutions have been brought under this Act: in 1957 the British Customs seized a work on soil erosion entitled The Rape of Our Coasts. "This is a fascinating contribution to the changing history of manners, morals and sexual attitudes and tastes throughout the history of European civilisation." (from the cover) (A damaged paperback copy of this book is available post-free in the UK for £4.50. Picture here. To purchase, contact us.) Background / Biography: Harford Montgomery Hyde (14 August 1907 – 10 August 1989), born in Belfast, was a barrister, politician (Ulster Unionist MP for Belfast North), author and biographer, who lost his seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as a result of campaigning for homosexual law reform. continued on Wikipedia Reviews: |
"To the majority of individuals the word pornography has an ugly sound. A sense of shame is consciously or unconsciously associated with it. Many people are inclined to look round uneasily when they use it and lower their voices lest the children and others should hear. It suggests a guilty secret. Let us begin with the question of definition, a question which is by no means free from difficulty: just what is pornography? The word is derived from the Greek pornographos, meaning literally 'the writing of harlots'. Thus in its original significance it connotes the description of the life, manners and customs of prostitutes and their patrons. Hence it has come to mean, in the words of the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary, 'the expression or suggestion of obscene or unchaste subjects in literature or art'. There is a hint here of inciting to lewd or indecent behaviour, since the editor cites as examples of pornography, following the older Webster's Dictionary, the famous wall frescoes in Pompeii which illustrate every form of sexual intercourse, in rooms designed for the Bacchanalian orgies." opening paragraphs Secondhand booksellers |
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