The edition in question.

Left completely unsatisfied was the question: Was the book actually and Isidore Liseux edition?  I remained suspicious. The illustrations look nothing like what appeared in erotic fiction at the turn-of-the-century, and something about the art style reminded me of early 20-century cartooning, more along the lines of Prince valiant from the funny pages than anything else.

I don’t know why I didn’t think to do this earlier, but this time around I consulted Sheryl Straight’s website Erotobibliophile, a treasure trove of bibliographic details.  Sure enough, she had listings of both English and French languaged Fanny Hill editions. And there, as well, she had my answer.

Citation from Eroticabibliophile.com

The addition that puzzled me was, as I suspected, a pirated version, attributed to the “Miller Brothers.”

The Miller Brothers were obscure contemporaries of Sam Roth, Esar Levine, and Ben Rebhuhn, all clandestine erotica publishers in New York City during the Great Depression.  Little’s known about the brothers, other than their preference for pirating and printing well-known works and populating them with explicit illustrations.

I realized after the fact that I had another work attributed to them, namely one of the two volume of The Modern Evangeline.

So mystery solved!  Next time this happens, I better remember to dig a little deeper and mine a little harder because the data was just one vein away!

Although, I wonder… that three-volume set of The Pearl.  The one that I learned from a noted book dealer was likely from the 1920s edition of that famous magazine?  I wonder if the Miller Brothers had anything to do with it?  A new mystery ensues…

Among the first pirated books in America, Memoirs first saw print around 1814 and prosecution not long after. Its original British publisher, Ralph Griffiths, was reputed to have earned 10,000 pounds from the book during his lifetime. Many book historians dismiss that figure as an exaggeration born of professional jealousy by his competitors, but it shows what a high profile book Memoirs was in its day.

Detail of a Fanny Hill illustration

It’s trivia like this that prompts me to buy various editions of Cleland’s famous work. I’ve got a couple of Isadore Liseaux’s editions from the 1880s as well as newer editions that caught my fancy through the years. Not too long ago, I came across a Liseaux edition that included a dozen illustrations packed between its covers. They weren’t native to the edition and there’s no evidence that they were ever tipped into any edition. But they do look like they were sized for a 20th-century hardcover edition.

Why do I suspect 20th-century? For one thing, they look nothing like the more famous Avril or Becat illustrations. Nor do they at all resemble illustrations from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. If anything, they remind me of whimsical magazine illustrations from the 1920s and 30s, all explicitness aside. At times the young women’s hair fall into a near-bobbed look while the young men sport ridiculous Prince Valiant cuts. The surroundings seem romanticized as well.

Detail, illustration from an early edition

Beyond my assessments here, I have no clue who produce these illustrations or what edition they were destined for. But it’s fascinating little tidbits like these that make me a bibliophile and keep me curious.

As usual, you can see all of the illustrations at my Flickr page. Fair warning: regardless of their charm, they’re NSFW. And take a close look at the last one in the series. That’s quite the tree they’re doing it under!

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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!

From the Times description of Bergner, I half expected the book to be something of an Average Joe’s look at sex, but what I got was sound reportage instead. Bergner profiled four different paraphilias — foot fetishism, female sadism, pedophilia, and amputee attraction, delving into each and their psychology with a fair amount of courage and curiosity.

Yet I came away with mixed feelings and a good deal of respect for what Bergner accomplished in Other Side. I found myself torn over the foot fetishist’s dilemma in his book. Here, a man was chose chemical castration to end his tormented arousal for feet, a fetish so strong that the mere mention of the word foot made the fellow hard. Regardless of context. My sex-positive side ached to see the guy cognitively talk himself into self-acceptance, but his shame was so strong and his arousal so inconvenient that he chose otherwise.

When Bergner moved on to female sadism, my first reaction was “The Baroness? Not again!” She’s a personage that pops up time and again in books when the author wants to explore sadism. Plus, she reminds me of actress Molly Shannon. A lot.

But I quickly saw what Bergner was doing: He was focusing on the rarest of creatures in the BDSM realm of things, the female sadist. And The Baroness is apologetically that.

To my surprise, Begner’s exploration at The Baroness’ side gave me a few unexpected finds. First, and perhaps most thought-provoking, when he quoted psychological schools of thought, he fell back on 19th-century KrafFt-Ebing and Hirschfeld, which stopped me in my tracks. You mean there isn’t anything more current? Really.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It might mean that the sexual expression of recreational BDSM is so acceptable to the psychiatric profession that it isn’t worth exploring. That maybe it no longer rises to the level of paraphilia. If so, I find that refreshing.

Nonetheless, I suspect The Baroness will come across to the uninitiated as unduly extreme and S/M as the frightening whips-and-chains of old. Her tales of extreme play — especially the roasting of a human pig-on-a-spit — will cloud the minds of the uninitiated. They won’t see her sober compassion for the street outsiders of her neighborhood, her capacity for soulful lust and love.

Be forewarned: The Baroness is not for beginners.

Bergner really challenges his readers when he explores the nature of pedophilia. When we hear the word, we don’t think fetish, we think crime. Bergner himself struggles with the subject, walking a tightrope between objective reporting and the knee jerk of his own parental protectiveness. However, he uncovers some fascinating findings in the process. Unlike the BDSM section where the psychiatric literature is old and dated, much of the literature about pedophilia is current and ground-breaking, suggesting that the mystery of pedophilia could be unraveled by continued hard work. Some findings suggest the disturbing possibility that pedophilia, for repeat offenders, might be an inborn trait, but it’s clear that sex crimes aren’t a one-size-fits-all. For every hardcore, inborn pedophilia, God only knows how many are one-timers acting on impulse after having lost all sense of boundaries. All deserve prosecution. But we must at least consider that what leads a person down this path is a varied as any other sexual motivation.

Is pedophilia an uncomfortable topic to explore? Without a doubt. Is it so distasteful that it compels us to remain ignorant? I think not. Let’s be more courageous than that.

Bergner waxes most compelling when he examines amputeeism. At face value, an amputee attraction appears extreme, like a fetish twisted into the strangest of perversions. For the reader, it’s like a car-wreck — you can’t help but watch. However, Bergner pushes beyond the rubber-necking to show us that the oddest of fetishes isn’t necessarily superficial. Out of tragedy, a woman amputee finds identity and acceptance when she poses for fetishists. And when she meets a photographer who has longed loved amputees, couplehood forms. Out of the depth of human existence, mutual fulfillment arose and a happy ending was had.

Which left me to ask myself, “Who am I to judge?”

Perhaps that’s the best message of Bergner’s book. Sexual attraction is a complex and varied beast, and perhaps we should be less quick to slap an quick-and-easy label on every little variation. Yes, let’s keep a strong sense of criminal victimization for such acts as pedophilia. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Let’s be a touch more discerning and knowledgeable.

The Other Side of Desire is a good place to start.

You can, however, find entertainment at the Ravenous Romance website where a new story “Hot Fling” is yours for the taking. I’ve downloaded it but because I want to read it on my Sony Reader, I need to set aside some time and convert it from PDF to .rtf. Maybe later today. (Even I need a break from my own delightful havoc.)

Because I’m either writing or editing all the day long, I’ve spent my evening unwinding with the new television season. I’m enjoying House M.D and trying out Fringe. Have Heroes taped and will watch it tonight, although all the men in my life claim it’s gotten too weird for them and don’t want to watch it. Bleh to them.

But what I’m really, really enjoying is the new season of Torchwood via Netflix. Especially since Jack Harkness’ sexuality is on the snoggin’ upswing. I just hope it doesn’t come too obligatory; I’d hate to see his bisexual lust reduced to one man-on-man snog per episode. That said, the reunion kiss between Jack and a fellow time agent was HOT. Do yourself a favor and watch this video starting at roughly the 45-second mark.

Now, you see, if Marvel superheroes had done this in the comics when I was a kid (and, later, as a much younger woman than I am now), they would’ve made a lot more sense to me. I always rolled my eyes when two superheroes met up for the first time. They also went off on a testosterone-sparked fist-fighting frenzy (oh true believer), bashing the brawn out of each other before discovery they were on the same side.

Had they fought and then snogged? Now that would’ve made some kind of sense to me — if for no other reason than its erotic heat.

And with snoggin’ on my brain, it’s back to sloggin’.

You can, however, find entertainment at the Ravenous Romance website where a new story “Hot Fling” is yours for the taking. I’ve downloaded it but because I want to read it on my Sony Reader, I need to set aside some time and convert it from PDF to .rtf. Maybe later today. (Even I need a break from my own delightful havoc.)

Because I’m either writing or editing all the day long, I’ve spent my evening unwinding with the new television season. I’m enjoying House M.D and trying out Fringe. Have Heroes taped and will watch it tonight, although all the men in my life claim it’s gotten too weird for them and don’t want to watch it. Bleh to them.

But what I’m really, really enjoying is the new season of Torchwood via Netflix. Especially since Jack Harkness’ sexuality is on the snoggin’ upswing. I just hope it doesn’t come too obligatory; I’d hate to see his bisexual lust reduced to one man-on-man snog per episode. That said, the reunion kiss between Jack and a fellow time agent was HOT. Do yourself a favor and watch this video starting at roughly the 45-second mark.

Now, you see, if Marvel superheroes had done this in the comics when I was a kid (and, later, as a much younger woman than I am now), they would’ve made a lot more sense to me. I always rolled my eyes when two superheroes met up for the first time. They also went off on a testosterone-sparked fist-fighting frenzy (oh true believer), bashing the brawn out of each other before discovery they were on the same side.

Had they fought and then snogged? Now that would’ve made some kind of sense to me — if for no other reason than its erotic heat.

And with snoggin’ on my brain, it’s back to sloggin’.

Which reminds me: I need to set up a blog listing mechanism where I can drop people’s press releases and announcements. I get a number of them, many from friends and colleagues, and I need to set up a vehicle for quick and easy display.

Oh and the NY Observer article was entitled “Smacking Foreheads in the Night” A Sexual Narcissist Remembers”? A passing nod to the new John Waters movie? It got me wondering.

* And I can’t find their archives. Can you?

I know I’ve been diverted with my short film (Or would that be video? What’s the difference, film folks?), a spate of family birthdays, writing my novel, etc., but I’m still surprised that I almost missed this sex flap. Leave it to the NYT to point it out, eh? At first, I thought it was one of those “west of the river” incidents which don’t always make the east-of-the-river editions, but a little investigating showed that it was indeed in the entertainment section of my paper. What started as a high profile exhibit became a copyright vs. public domain via appropriation battle, complete with our local outre art machine weighing in on the matter. It’s one hell of a coincidence — art meets familial privilege and power. At least it wasn’t over the sexual content, just over the inclusion of real, identifiable people.

Oh, and this little ditty? Can you say sex scare? Sure, some kids are hooking up and, just like a lot of their curriculum, certain sexual behaviors have been “pushed down” to younger ages. So teens aren’t waiting for college or the local working class bar to engage in casual sex. Maybe our abstinence programs have scared them off relationships rather than sex. You think? Really, it’s little more than a flap, given the numbers cited.

It started whenKinsey published his two volumes of sex research, a effort that resonated with the public conscious, perhaps even being a “right thing at the right time.” After all, sexology manuals were available to the American public since the 19th-century days of American free thinkers.

Maybe Kinsey’s books resonated because they weren’t simply “here’s your body parts, get to know them” manuals. Instead, they documented enmass what kind of sexual activities Americans had engaged in. And most mometously, he dared to document and publish volumnous material about women’s sexual experiences, behaviors, and preferences.

Hey, when a book like Sexual Behavior in the Human Female got coverage in Redbook*, you knew something big was happening. (Note the other cover topics for a glimpse into 1950s American mores.) One wonders how much further taboos and prudery might’ve weakened had Kinsey lived to publish a volumn on same-sex practices. The data was there, the possibility of a book was talked about, but Kinsey’s heart and the Rockfeller Foundation’s and the National Research Council’s courage gave out too soon.

Well, as long as we have John Waters doin’ his stuff, I guess we’re OK.

And while I’m sliding into a light note:Jeb Bush, you ol’ rascal you! Now if you’d just get rid of minority voter suppression in Florida, you might be alright in my book.

*Note the subtitle of the magazine. Back then, we treated young adults as if they were mature enough to handle information. Today, conservative forces don’t allow us much differentiation between children and adults. You’re either one or the other, determined more by your marital state than your chronological age. And, yes, I might scan and post the Redbookarticle in the near future. Today’s a tad too busy for it.

It started whenKinsey published his two volumes of sex research, a effort that resonated with the public conscious, perhaps even being a “right thing at the right time.” After all, sexology manuals were available to the American public since the 19th-century days of American free thinkers.

Maybe Kinsey’s books resonated because they weren’t simply “here’s your body parts, get to know them” manuals. Instead, they documented enmass what kind of sexual activities Americans had engaged in. And most mometously, he dared to document and publish volumnous material about women’s sexual experiences, behaviors, and preferences.

Hey, when a book like Sexual Behavior in the Human Female got coverage in Redbook*, you knew something big was happening. (Note the other cover topics for a glimpse into 1950s American mores.) One wonders how much further taboos and prudery might’ve weakened had Kinsey lived to publish a volumn on same-sex practices. The data was there, the possibility of a book was talked about, but Kinsey’s heart and the Rockfeller Foundation’s and the National Research Council’s courage gave out too soon.

Well, as long as we have John Waters doin’ his stuff, I guess we’re OK.

And while I’m sliding into a light note:Jeb Bush, you ol’ rascal you! Now if you’d just get rid of minority voter suppression in Florida, you might be alright in my book.

*Note the subtitle of the magazine. Back then, we treated young adults as if they were mature enough to handle information. Today, conservative forces don’t allow us much differentiation between children and adults. You’re either one or the other, determined more by your marital state than your chronological age. And, yes, I might scan and post the Redbookarticle in the near future. Today’s a tad too busy for it.

Until then, I’ll content myself with T.C Boyle’s new book, a fictional account of Kinsey’s life. Funny, but I keep reading how unflattering James H. Jones’s “Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life” was to the man. Frankly, I thought it did a good job outlining how Kinsey drew his research methodology from zoological school of thought, a technique that had its shortcomings but was never clearly or definitively dismissed by later schools of thought. (And, hey, just open the butterfly drawers of any natural history museum and you’ll see that research approach perserved every bit as much as the samples within.) Obsessive? Perhaps and likely it combined with his analytical nature, resulting in his drive for knowledge. And, to put it another way: I doubt what obsessiveness he did have didn’t rise to the level of needing an SSR. I doubt his detractors would decry the man if, instead of sex, he had poured his behaviors into economics or conservative policy. But because he poured it into sexology and made a substantial impact on our culture, he’s almost the pariah that Planned Parenthood is.

I didn’t find Kinsey’s little masochisms detracting either. If anything, it ran parallel to his notion that no sexual practice is truly deviant. And his own sexual experimentation versus the pristine, detached image he tended to project? Hey, you’re looking at “the closet” in action. We tend not to see it that way because it held married straight swingers, but it was the closet of its time. Which makes me think that the closet for queers and other sexual minorities must have been in the moth-ridden rafters of a crawl space.

One significant reason I never found Jones’ book unflattering is because I know plenty of people who engage in the same practices that Kinsey did and, well, I see it as “normalized” already. Seeing any one of my friends and loved ones on the street and you wouldn’t know who sticks something up his pee hole or which couple does full swaps on a Saturday night. It was, frankly, impossible for me to see Jones’ description as purile.

Of course, if you’ve rarely deviated from the missionary position and go to church three times a week, I’m sure you’d feel differently. (Too bad nobody’s collecting the sexual histories of the conservative religious segment of our population.

Psst. I have a secret: My new favorite bisexual cartoon hero is Brock Samson of Venture Brothers’ fame. At first I thought he was strictly a womanizer, what with the famous tented erection in his boxers, but when he engineered a bondage and fisting scene with the pirates of the Sargasso Sea?* Well, that just changed everything. And that’s some bone-breaking sphincter he’s got!

Yum. * See episode guide.

FYI: I’m sick with a yucky headcold and although I’ve made it passed the sore throat phase, I’m now in the cough-and-chills phase. Blogging will be light to nonexistent for the rest of this week — just like the first half of this week. Sorry ’bout that.