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As a collector of erotica and “curiosa,” an old bibliophile’s codeword for the pornographic, I come across a lot of unusual publications. Some are historical interesting — like a rare pre-Civil War erotic novel — and some are downright silly. I figure one way out of my blogging inertia might be to start a Tawdry Tuesday where I share tidbits from and about books I’ve collected. And to start things off, let me share four flagellation images from the 1934 Falstaff Press edition of Iwan Bloch’s Sex Life in England.

Falstaff Press was one of several clandestine publishers that produced books out of depression-era New York City. Run by Ben and Anne Rebhuh, Falstaff specialized in the risque and “anthrolopgia” and traipsed that fine line between scholarly and prurient. A arts-and-culture website’s wiki entry provides a sound run-down of what’s known about Falstaff Press.

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Although by today’s standards, Sex Life in England would appear tame, it was one of those titles that flirted with the prurient, largely because of its cabinet of illustrations as end contents. The flagellation illustrations I’ve posted here range from the seriously rendered to caricature. Hard to imagine that this is the kind of stuff that would stop the U.S. Post Office in its tracks and arrest someone for distributing such stuff, but such were the times when the Comstock law was in effect.

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Iwan Bloch was a noted author and sexologist from pre-Nazi Germany. He was a contemporary of fellow sexologist, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Sigmund Freud considered his contributions on homosexuality key to looking at sexual orientation from a non-pathological stance. I suspect it gave some level of legitimacy to Falstaff Press in the eyes of government suppression, but not much, given the fervor of the law. Although he was responsible for discovering the presumed-lost manuscript of The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade and he was an early biographer of the notorious figure, so who knows.

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I happen to like Bloch’s Sex Life in England because it’s a what’s what and who’s who of English erotic literature — although I chuckle at chapter titles like Highly Spiced Titles of Erotic Books, Secret Pornologic Clubs in England, and The Greatest Erotobibliomaniacs in England [and] Their Fabulous Erotic Treasures Described. Sure, it lacks the bibliographic depth and details of highly scholarly work, but it’s still informative. So much so that I have two copies of Sex Life in England in my library — one in collectible condition, the other clearly beat-up but perfect for reading and research.

I’ve posted jpegs of the table of contents from Bloch’s book at my my Flickr account. Stop by and view the breadth of Bloch’s research yourself!