Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock

Amy Werbel

Published by Columbia University Press 2018

Lust on Trial

Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock

Amy Werbel

https://doi.org/10.7312/werb17522

Overview
Contents

About this book

Amy Werbel provides a colorful journey through professional censor Anthony Comstock’s career that doubles as a history of post-Civil War America’s risqué visual and sexual culture. Lust on Trial provides fresh insights into Comstock, the sexual habits of Americans during his era, and the complicated relationship between law and cultural change.

Author / Editor information

Amy Werbel is associate professor of the history of art at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is the author of Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia (2007).

Reviews

ANNA J. CLUTTERBUCK-COOK, MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOC.:
A thoughtful new addition to the literature on Comstock and 19th-century sexual mores.

An insightful and entertaining critical examination of the prominent American censor Anthony Comstock (1844-1915). . . . [a] fascinating, page-turning study.

An incisive history of the futility of censorship ... richly detailed.

Michael Lobel, Hunter College:
In this meticulously researched study, Amy Werbel traces the rise—and eventual decline—of the figure whose name became synonymous with censorship in nineteenth-century America. She delineates how Anthony Comstock’s policing of erotic imagery touched on diverse areas of the nation’s civic life, from religion, politics, and the law to art and popular culture. In so doing, she illuminates the distinctive commingling of prudishness and prurience that shapes the American cultural imagination to this day.

Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago:
Amy Werbel's Lust on Trial offers a brilliant analysis of the life and times of Anthony Comstock, the fiercely religious moralist who led the national campaign to rid the United States of sexual expression from 1873 until his death in 1915. As Werbel powerfully demonstrates, Comstock's efforts to persuade the nation that such expression "corrupts the mind . . . and damns the soul" perilously threatened our nation's separation of church and state. This lesson in how religious fanaticism can destroy our freedom is now more important than ever.

Nadine Strossen, author of HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship and immediate past president, American Civil Liberties Union (1991–2008):
In this vibrant history, Amy Werbel explores the legal and cultural battles surrounding the censorship of "obscene" materials in late nineteenth and early twentieth century New York. Lust on Trial not only mines the history of censorship and repression in a modernizing America, but also sheds light on its legacy for current debates.

Susan Jacoby, author of The Age of American Unreason:
Amy Werbel probably now knows more about Anthony Comstock than anyone alive today. (And oh, how deliciously unpleasant some of that knowledge is!) There’s a sense of discovery that keeps this narrative moving.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Anthony Comstock: From Canaan to Gotham Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	15
2. Onward Christian Soldiers: Creating the Industry and Infrastructure of American Vice Suppression Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
3. Taming America’s “Rich” and “Racy” Underbelly (Volume I: 1871–1884) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	96
4. Artists, Libertarians, and Lawyers Unite: The Rise of the Resistance (Volume II: 1884–1895) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	150
5. New Women, New Technology, and the Demise of Comstockery (Volume III: 1895–1915) Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	233
CONCLUSION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	321
Selected Books, Articles, and Digital Resources Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	371

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Illustrations
- Other: 67 illustrations. Color insert.

eBook

Published: September 24, 2018
ISBN: 9780231547031